Game Overview
Developer: Hypnohead
Publisher: Tinybuild
Platform: Windows
Release Date: July 21, 2025
ESRB Rating: N/A
Price: $15
Links: Steam | Twitter
Real-time strategy (RTS) games can provide immense satisfaction when executed well, yet managing an intricate RTS map can quickly become overwhelming. Juggling various resource-production sites, units, upgrade trees, and unexpected enemy encounters often tests even the most adept multitaskers.
Enter The King is Watching, a game that streamlines the traditional RTS experience into a single-screen format, featuring automatic battles. Its innovative resource management system, coupled with a well-balanced difficulty curve and randomized upgrades, establishes The King is Watching as a highly enjoyable, pick-up-and-play strategy game.
Understanding the King’s Observations
In this game, the majority of the action unfolds on a compact 4×4 grid representing your castle. Players strategically place blueprint tiles that facilitate the production of essential resources and units required to further expand their capabilities. These resources also fuel factories that generate defensive units, which engage in automatic combat to shield your castle from periodic enemy assaults, all depicted through charming pixel art animations on a battlefield adjacent to your castle.
However, not all tiles in your castle can remain productive at once. Only a limited number of contiguous tiles under the “king’s gaze” can generate resources or units simultaneously. This design compels players to frequently adjust their “gaze,” prioritizing immediate needs over long-term goals while managing the placement of blueprints to ensure smooth resource flow and unit production.
Initially, you may allocate one section of the grid to basic resource production and another to unit generation, quickly shifting attention between them as supplies diminish. Later, players might introduce a market for gold production or a crystal mine to aid in creating more powerful magical units.
Investments can also be made in upgrades to expedite production on specific tiles or to widen the king’s gaze or troop deployment capabilities. As the grid fills, players must decide which lesser tiles to remove to accommodate more advanced blueprints obtained during gameplay.
Keeping Pace
Adjusting your gaze and production can feel akin to a puzzle game, demanding effective time and space management for optimal efficiency. Players must consistently navigate immediate needs for resources and units alongside strategic plans for upgrades. The experience remains manageable, aided by an intuitive user interface that consolidates necessary information onto a single screen, eliminating the need for complex controls or camera adjustments.
The King is Watching features a clever difficulty mechanism, allowing players to choose from randomized “prophecies” that predict upcoming enemy waves and potential upgrades available upon defeating them. This creates a dynamic balance of risk and reward, as selecting too many enemies may lead to an overwhelming challenge, while opting for fewer could deprive players of essential upgrades later in the game.
Each combat wave rewards players with tokens that can be used for permanent upgrades, which include expanding the 4×4 grid, along with offering access to new kings, each possessing unique gaze patterns and abilities. The adaptability required to manage randomized upgrades ensures that each playthrough differs, necessitating flexibility in strategies and resource management.
The game also includes opportunities between waves to purchase emergency resource drops, valuable upgrades, or single-use spells that strengthen units or impede enemies. Navigating the best upgrade paths often involves trial and error, enhanced by the element of luck in drawing powerful options. While skill and experience help improve performance, some runs may inherently be more favorable than others.
As players progress through successive waves, they acquire tokens that can be invested in permanent enhancements, including vital grid expansions. Even with these upgrades making gameplay progressively easier, the game intensifies enemy strength correspondingly, maintaining a consistent challenge.
This self-balancing nature ensures that The King is Watching remains engaging and fair. The brief play sessions—approximately 30 minutes for a complete run featuring two or three bosses—are designed to keep players involved, especially with a “fast forward” option that can expedite resource production.
Ultimately, each session is filled with strategic decision-making and urgent management of resources, ensuring that boredom has no place in the gameplay experience. The King is Watching strikes an impressive balance between being captivating and accessible, making it ideal for quick gaming breaks that demand both strategic thinking and quick reflexes.
