Past me can be a fickle bastard. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back through my Steam wishlist to find a litany of titles that I have absolutely zero idea why they’re on there. There are those that I can recall adding whilst I was in the middle of another game, thinking that would be the next one I get to. Inevitably though something else comes up and that gets put to the wayside and that original spark that made me want to play it long gone. I still try to get to them when I can though as there had to be something that made me wishlist it. Such was the case with Thronefall, likely added when I was seeking a good isometric base builder, but had otherwise been passed by when I did the usual Wishlist runthrough.
Thronefall’s premise is simple: build up your defenses and economy during the day and defend it all from the horde that will lay siege to your town at night. Economy is made up of various buildings like townhouses, mines and other resources which provide a fixed amount of income each morning if they’re still standing. You can then use this to build more economy structures, build towers, walls and upgrade your keep which provides you with even more building spots and upgrades. That’s where Thronefall deviates from most similar games as you have fixed places for the various bits of infrastructure, you can’t freely build whatever you want. Layered on top of this is a talent system for your king, bestowing all sorts of weird and wonderful benefits. You can also improve your potential score by adding on difficulty modifiers which make the encounter far more challenging. Completing a level grants you XP relative to your performance which then gives you access to more abilities, upgrades and modifiers. It might sound like a lot on paper, but after the first couple rounds it’s easy enough to understand.
Thronefall has a wonderful visual style with a minimalistic flair that’s absolutely dripping in high contrast colours that reflect the current biome that you’re in. The sharp shadows again add to this contrast, giving everything sharp and precise feel. This is then beautifully offset when the game switches to night and the primary light source comes from what looks like campfires, their soft glow giving a much more diffuse, soft light. All in all, it’s a very nice aesthetic.
Whilst the game’s premise is simple running through the tutorial level is definitely worth your time to pick up the basics. A lot of the more nuanced mechanics aren’t introduced until later levels and so the game won’t run you through those until you get to them. I’m in two minds about this though as there are some things, like the toggle bar for sprinting or the various number key shortcuts for grabbing your army, which aren’t demonstrated until after you’ve beaten a level or two. At the same time I’m not usually a fan of a game dumping all the mechanics at once on a player and having them try to figure it out, but any quality of life things should definitely be shown up front.
Once you’ve got through a few levels it becomes clear what the endgame of Thronefall is: finding broken combinations of talents and weapons for your king so you can absolutely wreck face. This is because to earn “crowns” you have to use specific combinations of modifiers in order to unlock all of them and for most of them there’s a corresponding talent which will help you mitigate them. This is why I’d consider Thronefall more like a strategy game wearing basebuilding clothes than I would the other way around as most of the levels will be won before you even start them.
Which is what a lot of people are looking for in this game I think, although I will admit that I’m not really a fan of pure strategy games like that. Base builders, for me, are about the actual construction of the base and how I can optimise the layout to its fullest potential. Whilst you can do that in Thronefall to some degree it’s nowhere near the freedom of other similar games in the genre. That’s more on me than the game though, I just prefer a different way of playing.
Thronefall is a well crafted strategy game that has some of the trappings of a citbuilder and tower defense game. It’s visuals are amazing, the low poly/low texture indie aesthetic being beautifully rendered in every biome the game has to offer. The initial simplicity turns into a fully fledged min/maxing strategy adventure in short order, giving you dozens of talents, modifiers and weapons to give you endless amounts of theorycrafting to do in order to get the perfect build. This kind of strategy game though isn’t my usual cup of tea but, judging by the number of extremely positive Steam reviews, that puts me in the firm minority.
Rating: 8.0/10
Thronefall is available on PC and Nintendo Switch right now for $18.95. Game was played on the PC with a totalplay time of 2.4 hours with 17% of the achievements unlocked.
