One of the most interesting things about the Game of Thrones TV show and its preceding books is that for such a popular TV show, Games made in the GoT universe are somewhat uncommon, with most being released at the beginning of the 2010s.
Which leads me to the point of this article. Recently I was browsing on steam, and found a pretty new free to play Game of Thrones game. I was curious, especially with the flood of negative reviews. I had to give it a go, just to see how bad this game was and why it was made.
Upon entering the game, it all feels a bit familiar. Anyone who has played mobile games know this type of format and what it entails. To put the details in brief, you build a castle and city and you build troops which attacks other players. That's about the general gist of things, of course, that alone does not make money. These games make money based off long waiting time for buildings to be built and waiting times between attacks. This game is no different, you pay to speed things up and pay to make things easier.
After playing the game for a few days, the easiest way to sum my days playing is simply the word “forgettable”.
During the early stages of the game, you are led into a very long tutorial by Melisande. She teaches you the ropes of the game and where everything is, as well as holds your hand on what to build and where to build it. This is fine for the first 10 minutes but gets a bit tiresome after 20 minutes of not being able to do anything unless she wants you to.
Once you are finally beyond the too lengthy tutorial, you are kinda dropped off with a huge amount of things to do and a lot of menus to navigate through. When you look at any corner of the screen there are tons of missions to get through and menus to check for small prizes and resources. This feels fun at first, because you feel rewarded constantly. This becomes an apparent cash grab when shortly after you are given missions that are not complete able unless you spend money. Often these are timed events with “exclusive” rewards.
As you keep playing, you get the sense that the gameplay is stretched wide but not very deep. Even the RPG mechanics they added with usable characters engaging in combat with enemy teams looks good but doesn’t actually offer anything more than pressing keys when the skills are ready. The tactical depth isn’t there.
I could go on for pages and pages about how simple the game feels. Even after playing the game for a few hours, I barely remember what I did during the time played, nor felt any desire to continue playing. Each time I logged in I was hit with a barrage of new events and felt lost amid the plethora of events and timed exclusive items and heroes and everything going on.
Game of Thrones Winter is coming doesn’t do enough different to set itself apart, and if we are being really honest, it feels like a cheap cash grab done by HBO to make money off of the now finished TV show. This is made clear when you look at the logo for the game, underneath clearly shows the HBO logo. The game shows no desire to mix the formula up or even do justice to A Song of Ice and Fire.