I’ve enjoyed my time playing Just King, and can see myself continuing to play it for a long time. It’s casual insofar as it’s easy to pick up and play, but there’s enough complexity and replayability that something comes up in every run that surprises me.

The game’s presentation is very silly. The art is bright and colourful, and each character has a lot of personality. I’m endlessly impressed at how distinct each hero looks given the simplicity of the art style. The music is also incredible, with multiple bouncy, high-energy tracks. Though most of the gameplay is fighting waves of enemies, there are occasional event nodes where you’re presented with a prompt and several options of how to respond. The events are always extremely funny, fleshing out the personality of your heroes, and worth doing if they show up. I normally don’t like achievements in games, but Just King ties most of them to actual accomplishments or unique event outcomes, and even the achievement names are funny.

What keeps me replaying, however, is the variety of heroes. There are over 30 at the time I’m writing this, and they’re all unique. You’re able to surround your king with up to four per playthrough, and they synergise and work together in different ways. There are melee and ranged fighters, mages, healers, a cyclops, even the sun. Each hero has multiple abilities, some of which overlap with others (the cleric and paladin both have a basic heal ability, for example), but is ultimately unique in its gimmick or style of play.

After using every hero multiple times, I found every one of them viable and interesting if given a chance and a balanced party to which they can contribute. It’s worthwhile to bring them out in different zones or with different heroes to see how they interact. Each hero has a signature ability they get at level three that affects how you’ll use them and, usually, makes them significantly stronger. Given the breezy nature of the gameplay (though fights can be quite difficult, it’s never too stressful and starting a new run is quick) and the cap of four heroes at a time, I’ve found the game very replayable and fun.

I’d highly recommend this game to anyone, especially at its low cost, and am looking forward to whatever VISH makes next.