The King Is Watching takes familiar ideas from strategy games and city builders and twists them into surprisingly tense roguelite.
Originally created during Ludum Dare 54 by Serbian developer Hypnohead, The King Is Watching has made its way to PlayStation 5, bringing its unusual mix of city building, roguelite progression, and tower defense to consoles. Here, we’re only able to oversee whatever happens under the king’s watchful gaze. The moment we look elsewhere, work stops. This makes it anything but a fairly straightforward strategy game with some light base management. if you scratch under the surface, you’ll be swamped with the strong need to make difficult decisions while trying to keep an increasingly demanding kingdom from falling apart.
Every Second Counts
Welcome on a small 5×5 kingdom grid. Only the buildings inside the king’s limited field of vision actually function. Mines produce ore, farms grow food, barracks train soldiers, and workshops craft equipment, but only while the king is watching them. The instant we move our attention somewhere else, everything outside that highlighted area comes to a complete stop.
One moment we’re watching farms to make sure enough food is produced. Seconds later we’re shifting our attention to the mines because we’ve run out of stone. Then it’s over to the barracks to get another group of archers trained before the next wave arrives. There is never enough time to keep everything running. We are forced to decide what matters most at any given moment.
Combat itself happens automatically. Once troops are recruited, they defend the kingdom walls without direct control while we remain focused on keeping the economy alive behind the scenes. It creates an enjoyable split between planning ahead and reacting to immediate problems, especially once larger enemy waves begin appearing.
To stay in control, we can pause the action to rethink our priorities or speed things up when everything is running smoothly. Both become increasingly useful during longer runs where multiple production chains need attention at the same time.
Simple to Learn, Hard to Master
Each successful run unlocks new rulers, advisors, spells, artifacts, and permanent upgrades that significantly change how future attempts play out. Some rulers favour aggressive military strategies while others encourage stronger economies or different production priorities. Learning how these systems interact is an absolute must!
The PlayStation 5 version also includes the Shifting Sands update, introducing a desert-themed region, new enemies, additional content, and dozens of optional Danger Modifiers. These modifiers dramatically alter each run since they change resource production, increas enemy difficulty, or introduce new restrictions that force us to rethink strategies we’ve grown comfortable with. These are strong changes that make no two runs to feel exactly alike.
A Surprisingly Great Fit on PS5
Moving the king’s gaze around with the DualSense feels quick and responsive, which is exactly what this style of game needs. Even during the busiest moments, shifting between buildings never feels sluggish or imprecise.
Despite how chaotic the battlefield becomes later on, everything remains clean and readable. Production buildings, enemy units, resources, and menus are all easy to distinguish, helping reduce some of the stress created by the game’s demanding pace.
The King Is Watching takes an unique idea and turns it into something far deeper than we initially expected. Hypnohead and tinyBuild have built a surprising strategy game around one brilliantly simple mechanic, and it works remarkably well. Every failed kingdom will make you believe the next one will finally be the successful one. Starting another attempts under the watchful eye of the king is what we loved the most during these warm afternoons.
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