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The "gameplay" flows like an idle game. You sit and do nothing while invisible meters fill up. The "gameplay" makes no sense and it is easy to box yourself into a corner and die. Literally nothing is explained in game. I could not find a manual anywhere. Buildings upgrade and break what worked previously. The "level design" is just randomly generated items placed around the landscape. The user interface is awful. This game hides its crappy mechanics behind a wall of pixels and pretends to be great. I have no idea why people in this modern age, with so many options for entertainment, continue to play and make games like this. I wish I had bought this directly from steam so I could get a refund.

Don't understand it, walking simulator, nothing really going on, stamina is too little and no bar that shows it?

I'll start with the good before getting into why I despise this game so much now.
It's got a great graphical style. The pixelated look fits the game wonderfully. The soundtrack is banging. So many of the themes fit the situation you're in. Tough spot? The music quickly matches the tension of potentially losing the crown. Building up your walls and defenses while flourishing in troops and handymen? Soothing melodies rush to your ears. These aspects of the game are its triumph. They're quite good but fail to outweigh the cons imo.

Now onto the bad.
I have little to no idea what most of the game elements are. What do the signposts do? What makes the flying monsters appear? Why is it that the big monsters (called Breeders) don't disappear and retreat at sunrise? I have no idea why these things happen even after reading some bits of the wiki. And I think that's most of my problem with this game. It doesn't tell you a damn thing other than basic information at the start. Take the victory conditions for the first 5 islands. You need to build up the boat, load it with some people, and then ship it off to the docks to go to the next island. Simple, yes? Well, I didn't realize that was the goal my first time around which resulted in me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around for 20 days until I died on my second run on the first island. I had found the docks but not the ship. I had no idea what to do and so I had no end goal to work towards. Are you seeing why not telling the player how the game works is an issue? Let me add onto this by talking about it a little more (though this is mostly just to vent my frustrations).
I am practically forced to spend gold on things that I don't know what even are. Water stream here and the game is asking me to spend 3 gold? I guess I'll spend it and oh, look at that it's a farm but it's only usable if I have a farmer. I spent 6 gold on a shack and now I have a catapult? Cool but it needs 2 handymen to use so this item really needs 12 gold to be fully functional. I could go on but you get my point. There's so many examples of this and I'm baffled the devs made this decision to make the game this way. I'm not sure why they decided on this route but hey, it's their game and not mine.

The AI sucks ass. Why do the workers constantly put themselves in danger by not hiding behind the walls they just built? Why do the archers sit in the towers next to the center of home base and ignore the enemies charging in to ♥♥♥♥ stuff up? I don't know. Another thing that really pisses me off is when half the camp's archers ignore the other side even when we're being stormed. Why do they do that? Also, why the hell does the villagers i just paid a gold coin to take their sweet time walking to the base camp? My guy, I hired you to go there and I need you to put your ass in gear. Run for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake! My empire is crumbling before our eyes and this dense ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is just taking a stroll. I hate the AI in this game with every ounce of my heart.
Another thing, why am I unable to control them? Am I not their ruler? Can I not give my archers orders? Why am I unable to tell people to do things? I am astonished that I actually need to pay each knight 4 gold coins just to do their job and destroy the portals after I already paid 6 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ coins to hire them!!

Okay, I need to circle back to the not explaining thing because what the ♥♥♥♥. Why does the game not tell me that chopping down even a single tree next to the merchant camp or other camp make them permanently disappear? It's not like I can even skip over them and continue building stuff past them because the game forces me to destroy their camps to build stuff. Why is it like this? I am missing out on free gold and more villagers if I don't expand and that's kind of the key to winning.

I ran into a bug where I didn't have the option to hire knights and after reading the wiki page I somehow thought I didn't have the right upgrade for it and so went through 3 entire islands thinking I was missing something. Nope, I just had to save and quit and then start the game up again. It was hell trying to get through them without knights but I suppose that one is my fault for attempting a simple fix.

Why do my islands reset after death? I have died a number of times on different islands and I came to realize that the past 1-2 hours I just spent were wasted. I was left with no people and no structures. Why? Why would you do this to me? Are you wanting me to stop playing your game? Because you essentially saying 'yeah, you just wasted that time for nothing lmao' is a great way to do that.

Bottom line, I do not recommend this game. It's frustrating beyond belief. After the first island I loved the game. After the second I thought it was okay but a fair enough challenge. After the third I hated the game. After the fourth I was just playing so I could mark it as completed. Don't waste your money. Do listen to the soundtrack though because my god is it good.

You need to read the wiki to know what is happening. Like winter is neverending, so if you don't use the banker properly (oh there is a banker, you're welcome) and you cut the trees near the trader tent, you f*cked.

An incremental / survival game (yes those are contradictory) with pleasant visuals but opaque mechanics, suicidal AI, and the most tedious recruit dynamic ever (monsters attack every day resetting any recruitment, and recruits take more than a day to reach your settlement). On the first map you quickly get more money than you can spend proactively, so you're left just running around endlessly re-recruiting and re-equipping your minions, none of the satisfaction of decent base building or management games. With sparse information you might imagine some interesting consequences or choices, or some upcoming significant level of development for your town, but at least to start it can't live up to any such expectations. Way, way, way too slow and shallow to function as a permadeath game, and too unsatisfying and poorly thought out to work as a simple incremental time waster.

It wasn't made clear how to get more workers after the 8th night on the 1st level with a level 4 stronghold. After that i had 1 builder, 2 archers a catapult guy, a banker and 4 archers in towers. No new villagers showed up. There was no money and we would have to rebuild everything every night.

it is sort of a soft lock scale base builder with little imagination and not many build options.

They kidnapped my dog and I could do nothing.

Its a good game at its core but it has two MAJOR negatives that kinda ruin the game.

1) they have the audacity to put hours upon hours of gameplay, but if you die ONCE, youg o back to the begining. Not the begining of the island. the BEGINING

2) You CANT CONTROL THE AI AT ALL. and they are great until you get attacked. You'd think that they would have enough common sense to stay behind the walls, but the minute the wall they are on breaks, they dont bother to retreat, they sit there and allow themselves to be killed, which makes you need to spend more money to replenish them, and monye is pretty limited in this game

Its a shame because this game is very pretty and addictive, and i love building up my empire, but the nightly brutal attacks and dumb AI with the threat of all your progress being wiped every night. It just ends up being frustrating.

Gameplay: 3.5/10 (Potential, but falls flat due to repetitivness and frustration)
Graphics: 7/10(It looks good, love the art style)
Immersiveness: 3/10 (Its there until your entire kingdom gets destroyed and you just quit)
Music: 6/10 (pretty standard but pleasant Score)
Story/Narrative: 4/10 (It doesn't really need a story, but the narrative could be better and there could be a better tutorial)
Overall Experiance: 23.5/50 (Its cheap, so I don't regret buying it, and if you want to buy it, go ahead.)