Warsim: The Realm of Aslona

I find this game captivating, it is fun, the dev clearly decided fun is more important than realism, there are silly things, there are simplified things, but there are many things to do. You rule your kingdom as a new king after some adventurous, terrible or other kind of background story made you a king. I found a legendary crown which made me a king, but i saw a let's play video, where the player started without memory but with an undead horde and walked into the capital. :D

Many things are random, but the realm "map" is static and there are some always starting forces like the rebels. You can:
- hire soldiers and knights or peasants from your militia into your army. Or just enforce enlistments for more peasants and hire bandits from your jail. After you found a POI, you can buy slave soldiers, goblins and probably some exotic units from friendly kingdoms. Like i can hire Free Lesser Essfanti units from an other kingdom (they are "weak" elephantoid beasts), they are very strong compared even to a knight for the same cost, but knights can turn peasants into a soldiers, so both has their advantages.
- Hire mercenary bands to do a job for you. Also there are elusive adventure groups for jobs too.
- There are also the Rebels, they want you to remove from the throne. There are the Bandit Horde and "smaller" bandit groups, they hold lands like kingdoms but they live by attacking everyone else. In my game the Bandit Horde is like seven times stronger then me, luckily they rarely attacks me, while i easily killed off the rebels.
- Hire advisors, a diplomat to make better relationship with other kingdoms, a spy master to know what happening in the realm, etc. Make trade agreement with other kingdoms, ally with them, declarate war or attempt to vassalise smaller kingdoms.
- Set tax and change laws about slavery, goblins, mercenaries, crimes, like make overzelous arrests to fill your jail, to get cheap hireable "bandits" into your army. Well, maybe you won't be popular.
- Talk with visitors in your throne room, give them money or send them into the prison, change the people's view about you. For example i let a gnome run away after he tried to insult me with a silly "You are a bad whistler!" shout and later ordered to feed a small stray cat which wandered into my throne room. I secretly hired an assassin to kill the leader of another kingdom, hoped the next one will be less hostile, but he was just as hostile...
- Bet in the arena for more money, hire champions, send your knights to quests.
- Explore the realm for places of interest, trade with them, tax them, conquer them or just learn new things. The realm is same - but have important places - in every game, but you can scout the lands beyond, - which is random - to find absolute nothing or something interesting. Me and my few thousands soldiers found a lich tower with 40 thousands undead. The lich was really chill, he just stared me down from his tower when i tried to talk with him. Well, we walked away. :D
- There are a lot and i mean a lot of random event and encounter, but also many static places to find and use. Like i taxed an already occupied mine, until some rebels took it over. Finally i took it over by force to get much more yearly income from it and sent peasants there to mine.
- There are a lot of random races (you can choose from 16 different options, from the usual fantasy races to the anything can go), in my current and first game, there are the kingdom of the Free Lesser Essfanti race, they are "weak" elefantoid beasts, they can crush trees with their arms, luckily they mostly crush stupid tribal goblin heads. Funny to watch their battles, the sound is great as they arrive to the battlefield with loud, slow trampling. Also there are the Scrawny Ravine Blogroki, they are half rat, half ape creatures, they are super weak but stupidly evil, they won't accept my trading agreement until i don't kill and hang three of my peasants from my gates and left them hang until they are nothing but bones.
- For the sake of this review i turn them into my vassal, they wanted me to behead my advisors as a blood sacrifice. Totally not worth it (i reloaded after that), but at least finally my jester said something which made me laugh after so many terrible jokes: - "Well, this isn't very funny..."
- The ascii pictures are ... well, they have their charm also the sounds are well done.

Every turn in the game is a year and at the end of the year the battles happens, every hired mercenary group, every kingdom or bandit group attacks someone else. It is rather simple, you - and them - can skirmish to thin out the enemy, raid for gold or invade for land. Invade is the most difficult, the defenders get 50% bonus. You can choose you want to send quarter, half or all of your troops. The defence force always is the enemy army divided equally between its number of lands. This means if someone has too many lands, their lands are easy prey. The battle is turn based but automatic, every unit has a strength value, the game randomly decide what happens and the armies lost troops in every turn. Sometimes random events happen, like a bunch of hunters come and fire their arrows into the enemy, some knights join or a huge monster break thru the battlefield, killing everyone on its way. Maybe someone just fart in a sudden silence. Also there are weathers changes, once the Ice Druids were really in disadvantage as the weather was so hot, even the soldiers fainted on the battlefield and at least once a battle stopped for a while, because of the thick fog.

Some other things:
- betting in the arena is almost mandatory, you can win a lot of gold there. Also it is funny when you set a higher betting limit, the figthers' name change so it is harder to choose, like from the blind peasant vs knight to red gladiator vs blue gladiator.
- many event is flavor, but have some impact. They are fun, but ymmv.

A pretty fun little terminal game for when you're looking for something laid back and simple. Gameplay mainly revolves around amassing bigger and bigger armies to conquer increasingly stronger nations via text control similar to old text-based adventures. There's also arena betting and exploring the procedural wilderness (both done via text input, of course.)

Sound effects are passable for a one-man project, and the music fits the vibe (And you can always turn the music off if it's not to your liking.)

The procgen ASCII art here is impressive. It's hard to find two characters who look the exact same, and I've rarely had issues trying to figure out just what I was looking at.

I would highly recommend this game. It can be as casual or as involved as you'd like it to be, and as a bonus it runs pretty well on Linux (aside from the text constantly redrawing itself in the terminal window during animations, but that's easily overlooked).

I bought this game when it was on sale for £1.50. I booted it up yesterday evening after work thinking "oh I'll just play for an hour to see what it's like..."

I ended up going until midnight until my first playthrough ended because I lost a coin flip bet with a demon for my life. This game is shockingly good for a text-based RPG that runs in a command prompt terminal! Definitely worth buying if you enjoy this genre of games.

Dominated all the land with the power of the undead, won my first ever monster fight, got to meet god (The game's dev), and deleted the game's code in-game.

It's pretty aight.

I Really Enjoy Games That Take a Text Visual Style with Simple controls And This Game has It all!

Overall I Give It A 9.7/10

The Only Part I Don't Like Is The Choice Of Music So I Usually Have Tha Game On Mute, But Other Than That It's Great!

I Purchased This Game On Sale But I Gladly Would Have Payed Full Price.

This is a fantastic, kingdom simulator! However, if you expect anything other than ASCII animation and text, then maybe this game isn't for you. Otherwise, plenty to explore and lots to discover!

worth a purchase just to support an extremely kind and passionate developer. these are the kinds of people that deserve your dollars, not those triple-A giants with their lootboxes and battlepasses.

oh! and it also happens to be very fun. a particularly perfect right-before-bed game. it's certainly not for everyone, but if it was, it wouldn't really be for anyone at all, would it?

the game is so much fun for just being text and the dev is a amazing guy

Sometimes, the simplest games are the best.

You need to have an active imagination to enjoy this game, but boy, is it easy to sink time into. Manage a kingdom, go to war, explore new lands, every turn you can do something new.

It's a really fun game and I love it, but after about 20-25~ hours I lost a clue what to do. I wish for more stuff, more exploring, more visitor interactions, more things to do basically. And please make demons harder, I thought they would be the hardest enemy in the game, but they were way too easy to beat. I would like it if they appeared earlier as a threat!

-Click Play
-Become a strong leader and destroy the bandit factions
-Be adored by your people
-Casually become corrupted by necromancy
-Hordes of undead
-Public approval drops drastically
-Kingdom collapses

10/10 game

Amazing game. Loads of fun details, but not too complicated. One of the first RPGs I've really felt truly invested in and able to actually roleplay. The simple graphics work super well in it's favour because it leaves a lot up to the user's imagination. 100% worth the price. Weirdly reminds me of West of Loathing, especially the exploration. Great work!

I bought it on sale for 2 dollars, and after only playing for 5 hours, I can say its worth the full price. Just going through the throne encounters alone is fun, and there's a ton more stuff to do. First text based game I've played and I loved it!

Surprisingly deep game that reminds me of a 4X Liberal Crime Squad. Cheap as chips and has a simple gameloop that rapidly pulls you in. Development is a one man band who clearly loves what he does. Highly recommend.

Fun little game, pick it up on sale for $2 and enjoy yourself

Amazing game! I'm currently playing it with friends, and we make decisions together. It has incredible depth, and everything that happens contributes to an amazing emergent storytelling experience. Highly recommend it!

This game is really, really good. One of the only games where role-playing is actually the main appeal and something you'll find yourself doing naturally if you're like me. I got it on sale for 2$ and I can confidently say I've gotten way more value than those 2$. My only critique is that some of the ASCII animations are super slow, although they are infrequent. But that might be because I'm running the game on Linux through proton.
Solid 8/10

Lo jugué en su día pirata, me gustó mucho, pero como tengo el dinero justo, no lo había pillado. Esta oferta ahora ya hace que un juego espectacular esté al alcance de todos. Muy recomendado, la gestión y el manejo del reino son entretenidos y los eventos en la sala del trono son divertidos.

10/10 volvería a abofetear a un goblin inocente otra vez.

-GIfted a gold coin to a child
-Child proceeded to swallow it and choke on it
-Public opinion -1

10/10 would let child asphyxiate again

Actually a really good game, and it is alongside the more beginner friendly side of games like Caves of Qud or Dwarf Fortress, which are still amazing in their own rights due to the systems they use.

It is essentially a kingdom management simulator, but not only that, there is many things to do but my favorite thing is to bet on fights at the arena.

Bought it for 80% off, I think it was worth the money. I enjoyed my time playing this game, everything seems fully fleshed out despite my first impressions. My only complaint is the combat being fairly underwhelming. Overall 9/10.

There were probably a lot more references I haven't seen or gotten, but meeting Beep was probably the biggest surprise. I was unfortunately unable to hire him since I didn't have any free slots, I'm not sure if its possible to meet him again, though.

First 24 minute play-through:
-10 minute understanding the game
-10 minute setting up the world and background story
-4 minute actual playtime:
met a a random barbarian in the north,hire him as the champion free of charge
bet all the gold in my kingdom for his tournament in the arena. Lost the bet and my champion
10/10 would bet again

First ASCII game ive played and it was way better then my expectations. Every interaction and choice is well written with pretty funny moments. the dev responding to each review made me decide to buy the game and I am not disappointed. I bought on sale but would easily pay full price.

very fun game. if you enjoy text based, they you'll enjoy the humor this game brings.

this is basically the game Rimworld, but in a text based medium.

It is very good. The fact that its a text-adventure can be offputting for some but for most its nice, almost calming, i do recommend. Its worth the money

Mayhem simulator. BUILD THE TRAP DOOR FOR YOUR THRONEROOM.

The guy created his own new kinda game

It's a unique and fun game, I found mostly about exploring the world the dev crafted. The amount of detail in the world is overwhelming. It is a rather silly game though. While there are quite a lot of procedural components, they play more of a supporting role. E.g. there are lots of fixed assets with limited interactions. It's it's a rather simple and silly game rather than a fully-simulated war/economic/political game, but there aren't really many games like it.

Personally I would've liked a map screen showing the land i own, where my kingdom occupies compared to other kingdoms, maybe also showing the trade routes I have, etc. You could justify it in-game by paying for a cartographer.

The information I saw on this game lead me to believe it was going to be a complex simulator that would generate interesting worlds to explore and conquer.
It's not exactly what I was expecting. It's a pretty simple game with some funny writing, but it's not the immersive world and politics simulator I was looking for.

excellent

Bought this game because its one of the highest overall rated games on Steam. Am glad I did. Overwhelming amounts of micro management which leads to increasingly longer turns due to the level of depth in the world and what you can do in it. You can personally affect the realm, and in turn, it affects the things you can accomplish, and see. Many many secrets, references, and lore that are easy to miss if you are not thorough.

Hi Huw2k8, awesome game.

Very Fun game with a good mix of randomness and fun mechanics. surprising has a lot of depth. will be playing it more and update once I get more time

Just a fun little game with updates coming out all the time!

Super fun

Awesome game for anyone interested in endless fun Kingdom sims that don't require a PhD to learn how to play *cough cough* Dwarf Fortress

I made a kingdom into a giant empties after taking over with necromancy and my subjects love me but I still occasionally get a hit to public opinion due to raising the dead, I conquered over 10 other kingdoms and have a strong alliance with a kingdom of super strong godlings and I make the bulk of my kingdom’s wealth through arena gambling, I retired twice to see what would happen and the first time my empire fell to ruin due to infighting which ruined my once great civilization, the second time some dickhead usurped my kingdom by killing everyone else trying to claim the throne after I got killed by a lose tile in my ceiling, I wish I could become a lick necromancy or have intelligent undead soldiers, oh well, still awesome! 10/10 would get killed by ceiling tiles again!

:)

Very retro, much wow.

A very in depth, humoristic text based adventure as the ruler of a kingdom. I wish I had already spent much more time in it than I have, but from what I have seen, I could not see any flaws.

All visitors go to the TRAP DOOR!!!!

It's pretty good.

Super fun text based war sim. The dev for the game has been adding to the game consistently for 7 years at this point so new content is steadily coming out. Has a lot of "this is a passion project" charm to it that I love with poems, singing, and easter eggs

Take the time to learn how to play. If it seems like a chore, take it slow and at your own pace.
I took the time to learn to play and was not disappointed.

The game is a kingdom builder played completely through a text based GUI. In this game you can manage your kingdom by building infrastructure and managing policies. You also play as the king in the world. You can see visitors in your throne room and "explore" as if you are also an adventure. I say "explore" because it is text based, some imagination is required.

TLDR: If you put in the time to learn how to play, you will be rewarded with a pleasant experience.

I've been playing this game on and off, but it's pretty good. I'm impressed at how much they were able to do with a simple text-based program. And honestly, it's a great way to quickly come up with ideas for new D&D campaigns as well. Or to create new monsters or empires from other games. I created America and added every President to their list of people to humorous results, for example. I need to spend less time in the in-game creation tools and more time playing though, I'll admit. But great job nonetheless, and I'll be keeping an eye on it for future updates from the solo dev.

Score: 84

It is a cool game, and it has SO SO SO MUCH STUFF, but it's just not for me.

I really didn't expect to like this game so much. 10/10 would build a kingdom off of slavery and gambling again.

Sacrificed 21 hours of family time for this, 10/10

Really interesting niche game, i bought it on a discount and thought i would only play it a couple of hours, between higher budget games but instead i ended up wanting to progress this one rather than others.

There is a lot more depth and adventure than i had imagined and scrolling through forums, i see that the dev (yeah solo guy helped by community!) continuously add new things to do.
The game can look intimidating at first for digging through lots of menus, but over a few hours, mechanics become clearer and it is very rewarding to reach the "ohhhhhhhh" moment where you suddenly understand that you have a lot more tools at your disposal and how a mechanic you start to understand interact with others and can help you reach an objective you want!

I dont think I will reach Balatro level play time for this game but it puts me in the same mental place. If no one breaks my focus I can quickly lose 4 hours of my life without noticing lol

Lots of fun!

This is one of the single funnest experiences I've had in years. If you can't have fun playing this something is wrong with you. I found myself getting immersed in a ever changing kingdom of madmen all with conquest on their minds, hilarity ensued.