Crown and Council is a turn based strategy game where your goal is to defeat all enemies in the board/world. Very casual, simple and quite relaxing, this game reminds us of table top board games.
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| 14 Gold to spend, things are going well. |
The gameplay is simple, during your turn you can attack and build. Each action requires gold, each conquered space gives +1 gold per turn by default. The more spaces you own, the stronger your turn is. You can attack adjacent or remote locations, if the target is fortified you might have to attack multiple times in order to conquer it. You can build fortification in a owned location or two kinds of resource producing buildings: Villages that will increase earnings in +1 gold per turn, or universities that will allow you to upgrade your actions to become more efficient.
Unfortunately this upgrade mechanic is a good idea but not quite balanced, as it is the most expensive building, takes many turns to pay off and the effectiveness is neglectable compared to increasing your gold per turn. As you can see in the image above, conquering 6 locations to receive +6 gold the next turn at the same time we are denying those locations of our enemies is a much more competitive strategy. There is also stuff that you can do but have to use the "secret debug mode", like accessing the local multiplayer, which makes the game feel unpolished. Check an online guide and you should be fine.
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| Map generation underway. |
Despite this problems, everything else is in the right place. There are random events that might make you loose a building or even a location, but they won't save you from defeat or give you the victory. All maps are randomly generated so you can play as many times as you desire.
Overall is an interesting game that can be entertaining for couple hours before you start beating the AI every match. There is plenty of room for improvement, like proper menu, instructions, match customization options and even an online multiplayer would be great. But given it is a free game we would recommend trying it out as an exercise that even the simplest mechanic can be enjoyable.