The King is Watching Review — Tile Autocracy

The King is Watching combines city-building with a roguelike system and endless tower defense, creating a near-perfect trifecta of the three. A pleasant surprise that came across my desk, The King is Watching is a title I would easily call a new favorite, despite an initial first impression that didn’t exactly excite me.

Looking into The King is Watching, you might feel a bit underwhelmed by what a screenshot shows. The gameplay at a glance consists of a small grid, an option to speed up time alongside several other UI elements, and two groups of pixelated minions walking at each other from either side of the screen.

This simplistic impression betrays the subtle complexities behind The King is Watching.

In The King is Watching, you are challenged to build a city, recruit soldiers, and defend against waves of enemies seeking to plunder your walls at each week’s end. As with other genre games, you gather resources to buy production buildings, units, and upgrades. Yadda yadda, if you’re reading this, you’re likely familiar with core city-building mechanics.

The King is Watching, however, makes a unique, subtle change drastically altering strategy: your buildings—production, unit spawners, etc.—do not function unless placed under your watch, a 3-tile L-shaped grid at the beginning of the game. Exceptions to this rule come in the form of rare upgrades, which means that during your time in each run of The King is Watching, you will have to be incredibly specific about which resources get produced and when you produce them. Idling on the wrong resource can leave you lacking in vital resources needed to prepare your defenses before the next attack.

Adding to this, each resource building uses nodes of a finite quantity—mines, fields, and woodlands—which you must earn throughout the match. This creates a strong economy simulator requiring a great deal of micromanaging. Since these resource nodes don’t regenerate, every decision has long-term implications, forcing you to carefully plan expansions, balance production chains, and account for efficiency. It’s not just about harvesting quickly; it’s about sustaining your economy for the inevitable, grueling length of a match. Is it worth dumping all that iron into swordsmen now when you aren’t guaranteed to get another iron mine at the end of the next wave?

The game is as much tower defense as it is city builder, though, and players must remember not to neglect their military. Perhaps the biggest (and most pleasant) surprise for me in The King is Watching was the game’s troop variety. Many titles in a similar vein would stick to about a handful of troop types, each with their own special abilities and stats. The King is Watching offers a huge variety of troops to build your armies with, without sacrificing in variety; be it an undead build, a classic horde of swordsmen, or an army of mushroom men, it allows you a surprising amount of freedom in your army’s strategic and cosmetic variety. This made subsequent playthroughs all the more interesting as I tried out different themes and strategic combos in the armies I fielded.

As I hinted when touching on the strategic depth of combining units, the soldiers and enemies in The King is Watching are more than just basic cannon fodder. Each unit falls under a type category with specific health, damage-per-second, and a unique passive that usually increases the effectiveness of other same-type units. Swordsmen, for example, do 2% more damage for each other swordsman you own, which quickly made them one of my favorite units to focus on.

Being a roguelike, The King is Watching features not only procedurally generated levels, rewards, and enemies, but also a form of permanent progression outside of each match you play. This progression feels fairly meaningful, as instead of flat number value increases to stats or production, you get powerful advisors, new kings with different playstyles, and unique buffs to enhance how you play the game.

While The King is Watching lacks any direct story mode, the game is jam-packed with storytelling—be it the mini cutscenes unlocked in the gallery or the detailed descriptions of bosses and characters encountered throughout your runs. For a game that essentially drops you right into the action, The King is Watching has a fairly deep bit of worldbuilding, painting a very interesting world with its entries.

I really have nothing negative to say about The King is Watching. The gameplay may look rather repetitive, but something about how The King is Watching handles it keeps each run fresh. Where similar titles tend to disappoint me, The King is Watching excels, easily making it one of my new favorite niche roguelikes, and one I’m probably getting right back on once this review is over.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of The King is Watching. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! The King is Watching is available on Steam.