Warsim: The Realm of Aslona

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.

Interesting concept, and seems well executed, just not my kind of game(I'm impatient, and have no imagination lol)

My First Kingdom:

I was a necromancer who came to power in a bloody coup

the people fucking hated that I was constantly turning all their dead into undead
like 90% of my income was through prison labor
The people hated that I had Goblins in my army and a goblin hamlet in my kingdom

BUT

None of that mattered cuz

I had a well funded wellfare state
I sided against my soldiers everytime they wronged the common folk
enlistment was free and the pay was good

I had a MASSIVE army of thousands of well paid well equipped soldiers
thousands of loyal happy goblins
and never ending supply of undead

This game is so much fun.

I had an arena champion executed then ressurected him and made him a champion.

I was so beloved that when I died people killed themselves out of sorrow at my loss, and as a necromancer that is quite literally the most wonderful thing they could in tribute to my legacy.

Bought game on sale
Finally decide to boot it up
Accidentally miss all NYE celebrations by playing the game for 10hrs straight.

Uhhh, yeah it's *slightly* addictive

Could do with better music and more sfx, but pretty good overall!

Better than Bannerlord.

A very fun and almost addictive game—it's a "just one more round" kind of experience.

The game isn’t as deep as you might expect; it can’t be compared to Dwarf Fortress or Caves of Qud. However, it doesn’t need to be.

One of the biggest positives is the developer’s dedication. They are highly motivated and actively listen to feedback and comments, both on Steam and Reddit, which I really appreciate. This is part of why I’m writing this review.

If you enjoy text-based games and want to support an indie game dev, spend a few bucks on this game—it’s absolutely worth it!

I can't believe I played this for 3 hours straight the first time I opened it

It's been a long while since I bought this game, but I decided to boot it up again a few days ago (on the Steam Deck), and I had a good time, forging my kingdom into a wide-spanning empire! It's definitely somewhat simple in the kingdom management aspects I interacted with, but I think that makes it fine to dive in to without needing to consult extensive guides!
I do wish that diplomacy with other factions was a bit more robust; on the version I played, I was allied with two separate kingdoms, but they kept fighting each other, and I didn't find an option to intervene in some way (and concurrently, neither of them asked me to help out, which felt weird to me).
As a note to any other Steam Deck players; yeah, this game is definitely Playable, but with some control configuration required (most interactions require inputting the numbers 0-9 and enter, and also needing to use the scroll wheel to review the kingdom reports), and some text wrapping looks a bit odd. A fine way to play without needing to be stuck at a desktop, if a bit unwieldy with how I set up my controls.

Good game, you dont see many text based games these days

In this game you play as a wise king who shrewdly gambles his entire kingdom's treasury at the arena, while in the middle of multiple wars and under threat of a looming apocalypse.

When I saw this game on Steam I knew this would be right up my alley. Sadly it doesn't seem to work in fact I spent over an hour trying to get it to work. I suggest just to refund it, if it doesn't work immediately. It's not worth the effort, no matter how much you think it is worth it.

It reminds me of the Text Adventure/text adventure game I wanted to play in the 90s. I believe it was on Arthur. I didn't have a computer (or at least not the disks) to ever play those as a child. That being said, as an adult it feels like what I would of imagined it to be as a child in the best way possible. I've only just started but its incredibly humorous and so far it hasen't been super repetitive but just living out the life as a ruler playing how you like is nice. It's like a text adventure of Mount n Blade. Just do what you want. Have fun!

It kind of reminds me of old gamebooks like Destiny Quest. The core game loop is pretty simplistic, the mini-games are minigames in name only, and the procgen doesn't really add much besides some light variety. Because of that, there is a lot less meat on the bone for roleplaying than something like CK3. Once you get into a nice groove, you can just spam end turn and watch as you wipe your enemies while rolling in cash. The depth is mostly surface level, as there's really no point in engaging with any of the additional mechanics like slavery or even the throne room.

Despite everything I said, I think the foundation is solid. It's just that the core gameplay loop is so nice and smooth, it feels like the perfect backbone to a more deeper system that adds more run variety and a reason to engage with all the different mechanics and build your kingdom in a different way each time - but then none of that exists. There's a spark but no bang. I think the first item on my Want list is to give more options for managing the populations. The proc-gen claims to add a lot of depth, but whatever depth it added is invisible in the moment-to-moment gameplay and I think forcing players to actually consider their population's traits and likes/dislikes, penchant for the arena, willingness to be taxed, or how entertained they are would add that back.

I did get the game on a sale for $3.99 so maybe I'm being a little generous. I'd probably not get this game yet for $10, but it is on the path to being worth that price.

This game has seemingly confused "depth" with "amount". There is a LOT of things to do, but none of them are particularly interesting, complex, or engaging. Instead of focusing on a few key ideas or mechanics and making them great, it spreads itself thin across hundreds of mini-games, silly events, and small individual locations to explore. I definitely see why some people may like it, but it wasn't for me.

It's also not anything like the games you'll commonly see it compared to on the store page and in reviews: it doesn't offer a complex procedural world like Dwarf Fortress, the ludicrous detail and mechanical depth of Caves of Qud, nor does it offer the emergent narrative gameplay of Crusader Kings. That's fine, and I don't think Warsim was actually trying to be any of these things. It struggles to find an identity for itself and so it's compared to games with a surface-level similarity.

Warsim IS quite surface-level sadly, and for a game promising tons of depth that was pretty disappointing to me. It is still being worked on, but the "lateral expansion" design philosophy has me not all that interested. Though I may not recommend the game I'm also not trying to discourage you completely. If you still think this game is up your alley and have the extra money to spend, go for it. A lot of people enjoyed it way more than I did!

Being an old coot that started out as a PC gamer pecking at stuff like 'Zork' and 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' many moons ago, I have a certain fondness for text based games of yesteryear. I thought maybe 'Warsim' would scratch the itch for a new text-based game and take me back to a simpler time, but I just don't think this one is for me. I like the retro feel/presentation here and I applaud the level of ambition and the potential depth of the game, but as some other reviewers have pointed out, the tone and the developer's offbeat sense of humor really left me cold and often clashed with what I assumed to be the serious nature of kingdoms waging brutal war with one another. I also found a number of scenes repeating themselves several times over with the court visitors in particular after just an hour or two of playtime, which makes me think this mechanic may need some more tweaking in terms of either the number of possible events or the RNG.

I called heads and it was snails and I lost my kingdom

the scary question is how different are large language models from procedural generation? what exactly is the qualitative difference?

i'd argue that in essence they are the same, the purpose of the reproduction of repeating patterns for the purposes of whatever, but LLM's have the advantage of being build completely on their head, being more applicable to more things. what people are actually scared about when talking about ai is it's potential of ripping away the purposes of liberal ideological reproduction for the petite-bourgeioisie

what's interesting about this, is that proc gen has been used for video games for a very long time, and if these things are both similar in essence, then video games are potentially the vanguard force of the meeting of social and technological forces.

mmo's mimic social media in this way too, i want to find other evidence of this, although that's just confirmation bias, simply because i want to feel smart for clout.

oh this game? it's alright. it's very old school in it's simulationism, it's loose guidelines or mechanical coherence remind me of mount and blade. it's probably better than mount and blade, yeah.

Kick ass game from a kick ass dev

I admit that this was definitely outside my comfort zone but I did give it a try.
The visuals are quite funny, but it took me a while to figure out how to scale up the graphics so I could play it with a larger screen.
It just did not captivate me as well as I'd hoped, just could not get into it even though I do enjoy text-based games. Too few options for role plaing, perhaps, and I did not enjoy the game loop and exploring / combat was not interesting enough after a few tries. It felt repetitive.
Not a bad game, just not for me.

still on year 1 but i like it

Truly inspirational

This game made me hungry for more text-based RPG/Adventure/Strategy/+ games like it - I couldn't recommend a more entertaining, fun or accessible entry into the text-based game genre, and hope you enjoy both the lovingly hand crafted and cleverly procedural generated characters and experiences that await!

One more turn... Go to Bank, explore, spontaneously initiate the rapid unscheduled disassembly of the World.

Worth it for the goblin interactions alone.

After reading the reviews at 8:30pm my time I thought I would jump back into Warsim to see what it was like. So it is now 10:30pm and regrettably I have to save the game and close it down. Sad!