Thronefall Preview

Thronefall is a fantastically relaxing and incomparably satisfying city-builder / tower defence title. Just released into Early Access with three levels — four if you count the tutorial.

In Thronefall, you take control of an unnamed king, building your own city, raising armies, growing your defences and economy and protecting it from any and all who seek to raze it to the ground. While this is a typical synopsis for pretty much all city-builders, the biggest change this game takes over its others is its simplicity. There is but a single resource within Thronefall: Gold, which is used to build and upgrade buildings. These all have different effects but primarily focus on affecting offence, defence, or the economy. It is occasionally dropped from enemies, however, it is more reliably obtained through houses, mills and gold mines, which give a fixed amount of Gold after each wave. 

Despite this, it is not given in excess, meaning new buildings need to be prioritised, leading to a fun set of decisions. They can also be upgraded, which increases their HP — and in the case of certain types of buildings — a choice of upgrades. Barracks supply you with a few units of a type of your choosing, melee units give you the choice of Knights, Spearmen, and, Flails (along with one more which I haven’t unlocked as of yet), while archery ranges give ranged units, such as Longbowmen and Crossbowmen. Units can be moved around in between waves and commanded to hold certain locations defensively. As far as replayability is concerned, there are a number of unlockable perks and mutators which have a variety of effects on the world, from increasing enemy health and damage to changing certain upgrade paths for buildings and many more, there’s more than enough to keep you occupied.

Visually, I found Thronefall to be utterly delightful, with a super unique visual style, however, it does have some issues. Primarily, it can be difficult to distinguish between different units, especially when they’re stacked close together, and also, the build locations are often incredibly small and hard to see. I also found the music and sound design to be less than stellar; many of the sound effects become incredibly grating towards the latter half of levels, with them overlapping a mass amount, while the music also feels very repetitive and unoriginal, yet still relatively pleasant. Admittedly, I experienced some minor bugs, where certain sound effects were incredibly loud, despite having volume relatively low. However, overall, I found the whole game to be incredibly stable.

Thronefall is a great little strategy game so far, and with it at the start of its early access lifespan it has excellent space to grow into something greater.