ReignMaker – Review (PC)
Reignmaker is an interesting blend of Strategy City-Builder, Match-3 and Tower Defense all rolled into one. But does it work?
You play the leader of a smallish city that you can build, in one of three hard-to-pronounce-and-spell worlds. You have a choice of forest, desert or jungle, with building themes according to where you pick, much in the same way that in Age of Mythology you had themed buildings dependent on whether you were the Greeks, Egyptians or the Vikings.
Your task is to conquer the Void – the evil that is corrupting the local wildlife and inhabitants – ie. other towers and realms in the form of a tower-defence and match-3 mini game. A range of enemies come at your tower, ready to destroy it, and you have to match three or more runes to fire different attacks at them. You can’t just match willy-nilly – if the enemy is at the top of the field, you need to match an attack in his column, or go for a vertical match to fire into multiple rows. A horizontal attack is more pin-point power, but when there are waves of enemies attacking it’s usually better to go vertical. There’s a certain amount of strategy involved here as well as needing mental power to find suitable matches fast enough.
In city view, you can build and unlock upgrades and powers that help you on your conquest. You can hire archers and mages to stand along your walls and attack alongside you as well as scouts to collect the gold your enemies drop. There is a vast range of minions here, although you can only take two types out at a time. The armoury will unlock weapons such as swords and bombs which you can then buy to take with you. The academy researches powers which help you with the match-3 part – certain spells will turn runes into gold, for example.
At the same time as all of this, you have to look after your town. Farms grow crops which are stored to feed your population. As your population grows you can collect more resources such as lumber and ores which in turn you can use to purchase more upgrades to use on the battle field. When you return from battle, you will be faced with a ‘Policy’ screen which asks you to make decisions based on the unusual dilemmas your city will get into, for example a wandering hermit having a pet jelly cube which is apparently the most dangerous creature in the world. What you choose affects both your city and your conquest – certain perks are unlocked by following each path. Usually you have four choices: let the villagers decide, be cruel, be reasonable and nice, or let the town’s elementals (mages) do some research on the topic. If you’re cruel, your townsfolk will look evil and corrupted, and if you’re nice everything will be all sunshine and rainbows.
Through all of this, I found myself considering if this game is ultimately aimed at a younger audience. I couldn’t help but think my younger cousins would love fighting the Gargantupine, a giant hedgehog boss, as well as using their noggins to match the runes and make decisions on whether or not that hermit (‘The Odd One’) should keep his baby evil cube or not. The graphics are basic, reminiscent of a Playstation One game, albeit very bright and crisp, and the villagers can be anything from humans to cat-like creatures with fluffy faces and tails. There’s plenty of content here, and gameplay is very rewarding without taking too long to get good at it. It’s well balanced, not getting too hard too quickly, and everything is very polite. In all honesty, my main problem was with the appalling voice acting – the American girl who likes to praise my excellent rune matching should be shot with fireballs herself.
I would suggest that this game is aimed at an audience of 10-16 year olds, but I couldn’t find any information on whether this is intentional or a bit of a whoops on Frogdice’s behalf. Standalone though, they’ve got the genre clash nailed – it really does work, and I look forward to seeing more advanced games like this on the market soon.
Pros:
- Brilliant genre blend of Strategy City-Builder, Match-3 and Tower-defence
- Plenty of content to work through
- Graphics are bright and crisp
- Political stance affects gameplay very well
- Conquest tower-defence is well balanced
Cons:
- Really awful voice acting
- Feels aimed at a younger audience