Your Royal Gayness

Homophobia cannot be a game mechanism !
There are multiple ways to educate through games about homophobia, but the treatment here is the worst I've seen in a long time. Your Prince has to act a certain "masculine" way (misoginy), avoid contact with princesses (the ye olde cliché of gay men hating on women, of course), and receive letters from "concerned citizens" when you try to make your country a bit more equitable.
Those letters can include rampant homophobia clichés, very trigerring words and threats (putting "the gays" in asylums, really ??). This isn't educational, it isn't funny, and it certainly doesn't have it's place in a "queer" game.

Such a refreshing and fun experience! Your Royal Gayness combines humor with clever gameplay, making for an unforgettable adventure. The writing is fantastic, and the characters are lovable. Loved every minute!

Fun management game! Enjoyed playing it, even if it was only for one playthrough. My playtime with this game was about 102 minutes. There is a weird amount of social justice for a game about a monarchy, but I DO want my citizens to have healthcare. The characters are all funky little folks who run around and get things done.

This game is absolutely delightful. There are some flaws about the game but this is a group game for LGBTQ people. Plenty of representation across the board!

I have found it is impossible to do everything the game wants you to do in one game. Part of the game is investigating princesses so you can prepare for when they visit, but there's just too many princesses. It takes too long to investigate them and the princess you investigate may not even show up. That's my main complaint but it is still a very enjoyable game!

3.5 stars. It's missing something. Maybe it's the fact that it's not actually a dating simulator, which is what I was expecting going in. Maybe it's the fact that no matter what ending you choose, they feel rather abrupt and unsatisfying. Maybe it's the ovely moralising idea that queer people should self sacrifice for the greater good, in spite of that being completely counter to the wish fulfilment promised by the premise - as if queer people don't have enough to sacrifice in real life.

God, it sounds like I don't like this game. But, really, it was super easy and. It contained almost constant gameplay elements which made for a fast paced game through. I found myself staying up late to see what would happen next!

The characters are super fun and nuanced, containing a diverse range of identities, from lizard wizards to nonbinary, bisexual spies, all of which provide parallels an interesting counter perspectives to our central coming out narrative.

Overall, worth a play. It makes for a comfy, chill, and cuddly experience. (Gay cuddles!) Just don't go in expecting a masterpiece.

To think that the game of this price can offer only this.

The concept is great, of course. And the art style is not so discouraging. The game, however, suffers unbalanced resource management as well as not so diverse events. I feel like some sort of overhaul is needed. I mean, it is still playable. But I could imagine it much, much more enjoyable. I hope there are more updates to come.

I like the idea of this game, but it could be alot better. The resource management is quite unbalanced, loyalty being the most difficult one, but the most important at the same time. Also, the scores for the nations should be in constant view. I kept hearing noises and didn't realize that it was my nation relations scores going up and down. The suspicion bar is also quite slow. I'd love to see this game get an update or a second release for a much better game. As it is now, I'd say it's not worth it, not at full price.

There's a lot of heart in this game. It's not perfect, and I ran in to a few small flaws and inconsistencies, but nothing game-breaking or crucial. On the contrary, I had a blast during my first run-through, a very happy ending, and I can't wait to see what other routes are available.

This game is cute, warm, serious in the topics it deals with, although it doesn't get too deep into romance (although, yes there is some romance to be had), the art is lovely, and at the end of the day, I recommend it!

I love this game, super cute story, I've played the story though many times and still gives me the warm and fuzzy's. It also makes me hopeful being an lbgtq Muslim that our world will change one day for the better.

I bought this game bc I thought it would be a funny dating sim along the lines of Monster Prom or dream daddy, but it's really not all that fun for a few different reasons.

It kinda reeks of rainbow capitalism, like all the dialogues surrounding being gay is basically everyone reacting poorly, me having to choose to come out, and/or being microagressive. It just feels like it was written by a bunch of straight people, like it simultaneously feels gay and homophobic, y'know?

Ex: you out and deadname your spymaster bc you're so obsessed with their gender and you don't have an option, it's just an event that happens, and for what? All so the devs could put in a story line where they say, "hey you shouldn't have looked into that info, it wasn't kind." Like I didn't! It wasn't something I got the option to opt out of! Every conversation you have with your spymaster about their gender is not optional and very transphobic. It feels like the entire dialogue was written by a cis person who genuinely thought they were doing something good and progressive with that story line.

Aside from that, it's just not a very good game from a story or game play standpoint:

- Resource Gathering
Either it needs to be longer, or gathering resources needs to be less time consuming or more rewarding or all three. Spending 2 whole days just to get 10 gold or 15 support is not enough. You have to choose between making gay marriage legal and dating or any other social cause like free healthcare, because they're all so expensive that no matter how well you manage your time and resources you absolutely cannot do more than one thing. Which is kind of a bummer bc then it's like, great I made gay marriage legal but I don't get to experience the dating side of the game bc I had to spend all of my time making it legal, so I don't even get to experience the rewards of my hard work.

-Spying and Dating Sim
Using your spymaster to spy on princesses is essentially useless bc there are so many of them and it takes 2 days to research any info on them. Spying on princes is also similarly useless for the same problem with the added difficulty that they're not all gay so you spend 2 days looking for info on them, 4 if you want more info, and then you find out maybe they're not even gay so you wasted a ton of time and the spymaster is better used gaining favor so you can make it legal to even be gay, otherwise what's the point?

I think a) there's too many ppl to spy on for it be effective, b) the duties of spying and gaining support from royals should have been two separate people bc it's impossible to do both with only one spymaster. c) the rewards of spying on princesses is essentially not worth the effort because they come to you randomly, and even if you have spied on one that proposed to you later, it doesn't help you unless you've somehow memorized their likes and dislikes and there's far too many to do that.

- Managing Relationships With Countries
No matter how hard I try, the elven country ends up mad at me and saying I was "being mean to them" even though all of my choices when I had them were not negative. I just kept losing favor with them for no reason that I could see or understand. The only way to fix that would be to have my spymaster try to gain favor with them but I was too busy using him to gain support with nobles just so I could pass laws.

-Potion System
Meanwhile my wizard just sits there unused and useless bc none of the potions are particularly helpful even though they take between 2 and 7 days to make and he can only help me gain favor with the vampire empire, who I never need help with anyways bc I have a plethora of opportunities to gain favor with them outside of the adviser management system.

-The Gay Meter
Which brings me to my next point: the gaydar, or suss-o-meter, or whatever you want to call it, goes up way too quickly and almost never goes down on it's own, so I have to use potions that just barely make it go down, then if it gets to the top I have to stand trial for being gay even if I have already made it legal, so like what was the point of making it legal then? There is never any other story or anything that happens when the meter goes up, it's the same trial with the same weird options to "prove you're not gay." Besides just being kind of offensive, it's just boring and a bad plot device.

- Skill Building
On the weekends in the game you get to choose between different activities that build skills, these skills have absolutely no bearing on the game in any way shape or form. I thought building charisma would allow me to make better excuses when turning away princesses, or at least give me more of a shot at doing so successfully, but it did absolutely nothing. It might have given me a new outfit? Extremely unclear as to how outfits or the skill tree work.

- Lazy Story Telling
Lastly, there's so few events in this game you just get a repeat of the same exact ones, so replay value is essentially not worth it. In six hours I played through twice bc the first one I was trying to give my country education, higher pay, and marriage equality and realized I could only do one of those things successfully. So I played through again and tried to focus on marriage equality and dating, but during my second play through I was so bored I skipped almost all the dialogue and missed nothing. It was all the same exact situations they just occurred in a slightly different order. I wish you had more choices when it came to letters too, but you only have choices sometimes, and again you get the exact same letters every time. I would have told my pal Omar to stop cheating on his f*cking fiance had I ever been given the option. It was so utterly boring, and given that the game description advertises that "every play through will be different,"it was a huge let down.

Tl;dr: utterly disappointing from both a story and game play stand point. Felt homophobic and microagressive despite trying very hard to be progressive, would not recommend.

While its mechanics are unbalanced this is the first game I can really consider gay. Not only is being gay central to the plot but the mechanics revolve around it, the game play is actually really enjoyable on top of it all. I enjoy the writing and characters. I am actually excited to see where paths go.

Besides the art style this game plays like its made cheap but its only in retrospect writing this review that I notice it. Its really got a great deal of charm to it and I am excited to see what these people do it the future.

In its genre its frankly best in show because it understands itself better than most. Prefect for a gay person who loves fantasy, political intrigue, a story based around being in the closet but working to change it. Simply wonderful.

Also I simply love the aesthetic of arabia nights.

King Alios, the kind and Just

I was very excited to get this game and I definitely wasn't disappointed. I love the setting and the art style and the characters were all very fun and endearing. It was a bit difficult to balance the different princely obligations (as was the point of the game), perhaps a bit more difficult than intended, but the story and dialogues definitely made up for that. The love with which the game was made really shined through and it was an enjoyable couple of hours. I definitely recommend the game if you're looking for something fun, relaxing, and cute, not necessarily if you're looking for something heavily strategic or lengthy (which I wasn't).

I wanted to like this game a lot, because the art is cute, and hello I need more games with queer characters that can romance other queer characters. I did enjoy the first couple of hours – there were some funny bits, and some of the events were really amusing. But when I tried to get the ending I wanted for Amir – all equality laws passed, marriage to a guy – frustration set in. I played for 7-8 hours, and didn’t feel happy in the final 5 hours. Trying to get a date was truly an exercise in frustration, let alone getting to marriage.


Advisors

• I like the three advisors, personality-wise, but they seem really imbalanced. A lot of the things I wanted for, I guess, the “happiest” ending for Amir, was all with Seraph the Spymaster: but they take forever to do anything, and it seems like in the end you have to choose between getting the laws passed and getting Amir a guy.
  
• At some point Barry became worthless since I had 300+ happiness and 60+ relationship with Obsidia, and I didn’t want to suspicion reduction potions because ... well, because I didn’t want to spend money on ’em. Seraph’s the only one you really can’t afford to not do anything with since everything they do is important or feels like it’s core to the game. Magda is meh. The money is useful, the army so-so.
  
• I wish there was a way they could all raise aspects with varying degrees of efficiency, so I could split similar tasks among them. Like have them all be able to raise money, but still have Magda as the most efficient. Or have them all able to spy on princes/princesses, with longer timing for Barry and Magda (although I’d argue if Barry is a Lizar– Wizard, he should be able to do a little scrying. No?). Be able to grind loyalty, but less loyalty. So on.
  

• I feel like 60 days is too short. The weekends were kind of frustrating because you could only do one activity each day. One, to increase your Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and/or Talent. Come on, man. I don’t need to shop the whole day. Give me at least management time.
  
• And it’s never really clear for me what any of those characteristics do for you. There were some short scenes where they paid off, but ... a couple of scenes don’t seem worth it.
  

• Can I even comment on this when, in the 7 hours I played, I was only able to get 1 date and it didn’t work out? Also the princes are ... cute, I guess, but they’re just recolors? Instead of having randomly generated princes why couldn’t there have been like, 8 specific prince personalities and then I could pick which one to go after...?
  
• Let's not even talk about marriage. Marriage is a distant dream.
  

• I have a big issue about the interplay between laws and the suspicion meter. Once I pass all equality laws, shouldn’t the suspicion meter be rendered invalid? It shouldn’t matter any more once I have passed all the laws.
  
• Another is the laws’ interplay with some of the preset random events. The Aeroth spy event once triggered after I’d passed all equality laws, including Equal Marriage. But I was still able to tell the female Aeroth spy that “your relationship [with the female spy under Seraph] is illegal here,” which doesn’t make sense. I’ve passed the laws; their relationship isn’t illegal.
  
[*]I’m not clear on how much the laws affected things... I wish there were stronger effects from getting the equality laws passed considering I had to invest a lot in getting them passed. Or is that like a dose of reality in a visual novel dating game (ridiculous considering one event had a talking whale)?

Cute game with a sweet message of acceptance. I absolutely love the art and the advisors are fun. But this isn't a real dating sim. The dating options are randomized and so you can't truly get to know them and the relationships lack intimacy.

Most of the game play is just giving your 3 advisors assignments each day and dealing with minor emergencies. I don't regret my purchase but I have no desire to replay it.

I almost skipped right past Your Royal Gayness. I assumed that a game that puts gayness in the title was just going to be so painfully gay that there wouldn't be room for anything else. But I clicked on it anyway, just to see how bad it might be. Cute graphics, that's nice. Then I read the premise. You're a gay prince in a kingdom that doesn't tolerate homosexuality. Can you find love with the other princes, without giving away your secret? All the while, fending off the advances of princesses of neighbouring kingdoms, and the pressures of courtly life that expect marriage and children.

I thought, yeah, okay, that's actually a pretty good idea for a video game. I put it on my wishlist and picked it up during one of the Steam sales, and eventually got around to playing it. To be honest, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I thought it would be more of a dating simulator, but it was more like a kingdom management game, similar to Long Live the Queen (though without all the dying). You basically have 4 resources, Wealth, Military, Influence, and Popularity, and you have to make decisions brought to you that will affect your resources.

Now, this game does a lot of things wrong. It had a lot of ideas that don't seem to really go anywhere. For example, there's a dungeon you can visit, but it is almost completely useless. You also have a statistics screen with four variables, and you pick activities on the weekend to raise your stats. But the stats don't seem to actually do anything. Also I ran into a pretty bad bug where the game sort of crashed when doing one quest, you had to click “ignore” on a bunch of error messages to get through it, and you miss out on a bunch of conversation.

NEVERTHELESS, I really liked this game. It has a lot of heart. I got choked up several times, reading letters from grateful citizens, after I passed a law allowing gay marriage. Also, it's just quite cute and charming. One thing I enjoyed was that if you act too gay, the establishment kidnaps you and submits you to a trial involving a game where you must guess all the straight options i.e. pick the avocado, not the cucumber. So, despite it's flaws, I think it's a fun game. I give it 3/5 stars, grab it on sale though, because I'm not sure about the $15 price tag.

You Royal Gayness is a competent kingdom ruling simulator made in a form of a visual novel. If you played games like Long Live The Queen or Reigns you should feel at home with this title.

Your rulings affect four areas of influence: money, army, nobility and common people. Balancing between these as well as foreign policy and private life of the protagonist are the core element of the gameplay. The game is humorous, absorbing and full of love. It skillfully approaches problems of a modern society giving you something to think about after you're done playing.

It takes over 2 hours to finish one playthrough and every decision you make deeply matters to the plot and gameplay, always leading to implications in the future. However, the game still offers decent level of replayability because the story is built from branching paths that can be played dfferently with next playtroughs. Recommended!

Cute, short and pretty innocent. Very causal decision making game that has a good deal of wit. Only thing I didn't love was the straight acting potion. Gay guys can smell like steak and wear cargo shorts. What I loved about Mass Effect's Sheppard was he didn't fall into stereotypes and his gay romance options were normal guys, even tough guys. Being gay doesn't make you effeminate and smell good(or even "smell gay"-- As this game put it when a potion backfired...). But overall this game was pretty clever and has a decent message.

I like the idea of the game and I enjoyed it like for the first 45 minutes

but then it became so boring. It's literally very very boring.

by the end of the game it becames annoying. because all the days (there is 60 days in the game) are the same, literally the same, no plot twist, no action, nothing.

All the game you're solving some unintersting country problems, you must gather money, loyalty and blah, blah, blah, blah.

this game is totally not about romance.

60 percent of the game is about gathering resources cuz if u don't do that you'll lose.

30 percent of the game is how to hide that you're gay. (it was the most annoying and boring part)

9 percent is reading letters

0.9 percent is romance

0,1 percent is building relationship with the other guy

there're a lot of letters that some people send to our hero but it has to do nothing with the plot of the game. Absolutely nothing. There were more letters that don't make sense than building the relationship in this game.

This game is so ridiculous.

I loved prince Amir, he's cute. I loved the drawings. But the structure of the game is baaaad, the plot is really really bad, the dialoques are so so, relationships are bad (almost none of them). I loved the politics and the laws, collecting stuff but it becomes the main minus of the game (too much of it). You can improve talents of the prince but for what (it doesn't connected to the plot or game progression or relationship).

I would not recommend this game. There are lot of things that the creators have to improve

I liked the concept of the game, and had fun playing it, but it's probably not worth the money I spent, considering that I played it through 3 times to get the good ending, and I only have 3 hours of play time logged in. Also, most of the mechanics of this game don't matter very much (did relationships really do anything for me in the end?), and it was impossible to get enough loyalty to make it through more than one law path (60 days was too short). I just felt like there were a lot of things that SEEMED important, but ultimately did nothing, and the only real objective was to make it through the equality branch.

I really wanted, and tried, to like this game, but overall it was frustrating and disappointing.

RESOURCES - This system is SUPREMELY frustrating because you can't really do much of anything, and most of it doesn't matter anyway. My biggest complaint is that money and happiness are way too easy to get, and loyalty is impossible. Doing nothing but putting your spymaster on garnering loyalty, and picking practically all the options that further get it, you still barely manage to cobble enough together to fully complete just one law path, and obviously you are meant to go with the equality path. There's no time or resources enough to do all the others. Also, it's supremely tiresome and juvenile that the tax laws are all shaming. Like, you do need taxes to run a country, grow up. As to the weekend stuff - ????????? The first play through, none of it matter at all. The second play through, apparently I should have focused on nerve (the stupid, anachronistc shopping option) because the need for it came up twice and mine was too low.

MARRIAGE/ROMANCE - I HATED the 'are you acting straight enough' meter. It was gross. I don't know why not a single person on the development team went 'maybe this perpetuates stereotypes/might hurt people who face this very real fear of getting disowned/beaten/killed if they don't act straight enough.' And there was no romance at all. Like, one prince showed up, but I couldn't impress him because I didn't have enough Nerve. Then I finally found time to spy (which, creepy much?) on one of the many copy/pasted with different colors princes, and then at the end of the game I wound up married to some dude I'd never met during my play through. Fun!

SPYING - I can get this was intended to be cute, but mostly it just came off creepy. Also, it was completely fricking pointless. You're so busy trying to get enough loyalty to do just three laws that there's no time for spying AND IT DOESN'T MAKE A DIFFERENT TO ANYTHING. None. Zilch. Nada. I spied once during my second playthrough and it made no difference to who I married, and I never needed it for the princesses.

POTION MAKING - no idea what this was for, it made no difference to anything

IMPROVE RELATIONS - why bother telling my advisors to do this? Everything seems to increase just fine on its own through the course of the game.

WEEKENDS - the increased were so incremental, and you could improve things so rarely, ultimately they're pointless.

GAMEPLAY - THERE IS SO MUCH WASTED TIME. This game would have been so much better if loyalty hadn't even been something assigned to Seraph. Ever single freaking day it's 'we had a peaceful dinner' or 'nothing happened today'. You know what would have been fun? If in the morning you did audiences, in the afternoon you met with nobles and such to schmooze them for the loyalty and international relations, and in the evening you attended parties where you had to avoid princesses and flirt with princes. THAT would have been an engaging game. Instead it feels like most of the time and opportunity for things is wasted, and so many elements are just flat out useless, to the point they could be removed and literally nothing would change.


Like, the only thing that is interesting in this game is managing the kingdom, and even that gets frustrating at times because of the awkward system. The avoiding the brides is pointless. There's no romance line at all that I can find. And the characters all seem flat, a little too OTT, or weirdly self-insert and a little too perfect.

Liked it. Funny little game, I appreaciated being the targeted demographic for once. Price is a little on the high side, but I don't regret encouraging the developers as it's a bit of a niche market.