Thousands can scheme against you in political sim King Of The Castle

rockpapershotgun.com:

At first glance, King Of The Castle might look similar to other medieval political sims; something like Reigns or Yes, Your Grace, where you ascend the throne, rule a kingdom, and make decisions that will impact your gold reserves, military strength, or alliances. That political manoeuvring is intact in King Of The Castle, but this time up to 24 of your friends (or thousands of Twitch viewers) can join your campaign, hopping into the shoes of nobles from various regions. All of them have different goals, all of them can vote on certain decisions, and all of them have the potential to support or backstab the all-powerful monarch: you.

That’s the general premise for King Of The Castle: a hybrid between a massive party game and a monarchy sim, capturing the chaotic comedy and fragile scheming that accompanies political decision-making - with a little fantasy thrown in for good measure. Tributary Games's studio lead Samuel Partridge tells me they’ve coined ‘Game Of Phones’ as a tagline, “which hopefully won’t get us sued,” he adds.

Most players are familiar with choice-based games and how they work, but it’s rare to see a game cater that experience to a crowd. King Of The Castle’s content lead Harry Tuffs likened it to “writing for theatre - except it’s a theatre where the audience is particularly rowdy, and are also invited to rush the stage any time.” But tons of problems can crop up when serving this kind of story to thousands of players, rather than just one. A KOTC playthrough needs to be legible to, for example, a channel-hopping Twitch viewer who stops in mid-way through a plot to overthrow the King. One part of the solution was to implement medieval fantasy tropes that acted as touchstones for players and were