The King's Road

A pretender sits on your throne. The road to his gate is seven roads long, and you will not walk it alone. The King's Road is a hand-drawn strategy game about the unglamorous part of taking a kingdom back: the felling, the hauling, the feeding, and the slow business of turning a campfire and a handful of vagrants into a company that can break a castle gate. RAISE A TOWN ON EVERY ROAD Mark the timber and your foresters fell it. Sink a mine and your miners work the seam. A tool store turns wood into hammers and picks; a weapon store turns iron into swords and bows. Every trade feeds the next, and nothing happens because you pressed a button — it happens because somebody walked over and did it. HIRE THE PEOPLE WHO WILL DO IT Vagrants camp along the road. Pay one and he takes up a tool and a trade. Pay him again and he takes up a sword. The company that reaches the seventh road is the company you built on the first six, and the men you left behind stayed behind. HOLD THE ROAD AFTER DARK Raiders come at night. Walls and towers go up where you put them, torches light what they reach, and an archer on a tower is worth three in the open. Dawn shows you what you got wrong. THEN TAKE THE CASTLE Plant your standard and the company holds the ground you chose. Order an advance and they take the thing in front of them — a bailey, a wall and its tower, the gatehouse — and come back for orders. A siege engine breaks what swords cannot. The throne room is the last thing left. DRAWN, NOT RENDERED Every tree, every figure, every wall is drawn in ink and colour, down to the reflection in the river and the way the light of a torch cuts into the dark. There is a sunrise on the seventh morning and somebody should see it. NO ACCOUNTS, NO ADS, NO TIMERS It is a game, not a service. It runs offline, collects nothing, sends nothing, and asks for nothing after you have bought it. Your progress lives in save slots on your own device. Play with the on-screen controls, a keyboard, or a game controller.