Ever wanted absolute control over a kingdom down to the flick of your gaze? In our deep dive into The King is Watching, we enter a realm where laziness breeds in shadows and progress blossoms under your stare. This roguelite kingdom builder demands vigilance, punishes distraction, and rewards smart resource prioritisation with every glance. As you pivot between armies, crops, and cursed terrain, the crown never truly rests, and neither do your pixels. It’s power management by proxy, and it’s unexpectedly thrilling.

The King is Watching Review Pros

• Beautiful pixel art graphics. 
• 373.56MB download size. 
• Steam achievements. 
• Screen options – x2 and x3. 
• Audio sliders for music and sounds. 
• Man and resource tower defence gameplay. 
• Opening tutorial pop-ups as you play with an initial setup. 
• Three game speed options, which can be changed instantly. 
• Drag and drop interface and game play. 
• Grid-based base layout, you drag buildings, etc., into squares on the grid. 
• Anyhing time based, like crafting and respawning, training, etc., is real-time. 
• You are looking to build a massive army and protect your king from waves of enemies. 
• Collect, farm, and earn materials and resources to buy and craft buildings, troops, spells, etc
• You have a bar at the top that moves at a speed, and each flag on it denotes an event, enemy wave, or boss fight. 
• Traders can appear, and you spend your cash on new abilities, resources or upgrades. 
• At the end of a wave, you can click through the rewards, making choices as you go. 
• Prophecy cards have to be picked at set intervals, and they can be good or bad to you, with them showing what they are, but also whether they are inevitable or optional. Think of them as modifiers that you have some control over. Inevitable cards have to be played regardless. 
• Choose your own adventure style encounters happen, and show odds and rewards before you choose. 
• Combat is automatic, and all you can do is drop abilities or spells in an area. 
• Hover over things to get tool tip pop-ups. 
• You get all the information like damage output, troops morale, timers, resource amounts, etc. 
• The game is run based, and you get a breakdown of weeks lasted and green eye coins earned for permanent unlocks. 
• When not on a run, you have a central village where you buy new buildings for new options like upgrading structures permanently, the council to add new buffs via your choice of councillor, and the encyclopedia. 
• When starting a new run, you choose your King, advisors, see and pick abilities available to you, location, and threat level. 
• Set whether troops spawn in the field or in the barracks after being trained up. 
• Play how you want, and it is highly encouraged. 
• Seven kings to unlock, and each has a couple of powers that you unlock as you play as that king. 
• It is a good-looking game, and I love the little animations of everyone. 
• When I finally get a good run going, it is satisfying, but I may be getting that mixed up with my finally it’s over, and I actually won feeling. 
• Troops’ health does show, and you can hover over them. It’s worth noting that health stays between rounds, but you can get spells to help heal. 
• Different weather types can happen. 
• Challenges are optional side quests to bear in mind, as they give bonus rewards for finishing them. 
• Boss fights happen and have a cool boss intro splash screen. 

The King is Watching Review Cons

• No controller support, and even if there was, the mouse is far superior. 
• The tutorials are not good; they leave you alone for far too long, and you just have to guess what’s going on. 
• The initial King is not good; he has slow training speeds for troops. 
• Early game on a new run is tedious until you make huge gains in unlocks. 
• It’s a game that just takes a long time to get going, but also takes so long to feel comfortable playing and knowing what’s going on. 
• There is a bare minimum of graphic options. 
• No accessibility options like Colourblind or text size. 
• It is a frustrating game that feels rigged against you. 
• You have to suffer through many losses to get cash to unlock the chance to try and get better. 
• Buildings and features you unlock in the village are not explained and have no text hover. 
• The balance is all off, and it’s the one constant threat to the player. 

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The King is Watching

Official Website: 

Developer: Hypnohead

Publisher: tinyBuild

Store Link:

Steam