It's rare you can fork over a few bucks and have the next several dozen hours of your life be utterly consumed, but that's what early access roguelike autobattler Just King is offering. For $3 (it's on sale for a buck off the $4 price until July 28) you get cute chunky art, simple controls that take the briefest moment to learn, a brilliant chiptune-inspired soundtrack, and an overwhelming «just one more game» vibe as you guide adorable yet valiant heroes into battle against monstrous mobs.
As in chess, the king is top dog and if he perishes it's game over. So you surround your tiny king with four fierce heroes, which include knights, paladins, rogues, berserkers, imps, bards, and over a dozen others to choose from. When you windmill into battle you steer the king and his entourage with WASD and your mouse, but they do the actual fighting without your input. You can advance or retreat, but it's all down to how well you've equipped your band of adventurers and how effectively they mesh as a fighting team.
A berserker is an excellent warrior: it can transform into a bear and dash away from the king to take on mobs solo, but you'll probably also want a healer to restore its HP when it returns to your little pack. Imps can do fire damage, hoplites and archers can hurl spears and quickfire arrows for ranged attacks, paladins are a double threat because they deal damage and heal, and bards… well, they're bards. They play music to give the party buffs. There's even a separate «bard slider» on the menu you can turn down if the sound of their strumming annoys you, though personally I crank it up so if my party fights a horde of bards there's just a cacophony of goofy string music. As the game's Steam page says: «Be patient with
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