Yogscast Games and developer Save Sloth Studios have announced The Royal Writ, a lane-based deckbuilder with an extra sting in its tail for those who like their difficulty a little higher.
The game sees you marching your troops across a series of procedurally-generated maps in order to defeat the final boss and emerge from your run victorious. So far, so deckbuilder, but there’s a twist to this one.
If your cards arrive at their destination and the enemy base still has health remaining, then those cards will be permanently deleted from your deck for that run, so you’ll have to make clever decisions about which cards to send and which ones to reserve.
Save Sloth and Yogscast say the permadeath mechanic in The Royal Writ is all part of the point; the system is designed to create “the ultimate jeopardy”, leading to “emergent sub-stories” and “memorable” individual runs.
The studios say the point is either to “achieve victory through strategic planning or game-breaking synergies”, or to “fail miserably because your soldier got stuck in a bog and you forgot he can’t fly”. We’ve all been there.
All of this is wrapped up in “cute picture-book visuals” that emphasize the “grotesque and absurd humor of a medieval world engulfed in constant war and deceit”.
Development on The Royal Writ began as part of game jam competition Ludum Dare 55, and following “hugely positive feedback”, the game moved into full development. You can check out The Royal Writ‘s debut trailer here.
Unfortunately, The Royal Writ doesn’t have a release date yet, but if you’d like to give the game a go, a playable demo will be available “soon”, according to Yogscast and Save Sloth.
The Royal Writ is set for release in 2025 for PC via Steam. There’s no word on console ports for the game yet.
