HBO’s hit television show Game of Thrones never got the game that it deserved. With a few releases that never managed to be more than mediocre or above average, including Telltale’s episodic series, there was no way that we could properly feel like a Westeros lord living a life of adventure, unlikely alliances and unexpected deaths. And quite a bit of sexy loving as well.
Do any of you recall Bigpoint’s MMORPG Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms, which was announced way back in 2012? Well, several years later and only a couple of “it’s still in development” messages, we discovered an unexpected connection: this game has turned into the upcoming Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming browser game from Yoozoo Games.
Announced in August 2018 by Yoozoo Games, makers of the League of Angels series of MMORPGs – you know, the ones featuring cool and sexy artwork as a major selling point –, Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming is a strategy browser game where you play as a Westeros lord, customizing your castle, training an army and expanding your territory. You get to recruit faces that you know well from the show, including Jon Snow, Jaime Lannister, Sansa Stark and more to wage war.
Sounds familiar? It probably does, and not in a favorable way. This generic description sounds a lot like hundreds of other strategy browser games, even those dreaded SLG games that you play – or better, you watch – in your cell phone.
But what is the connection between Bigpoint’s Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms and the new Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming? As it turns out, it’s a simple one: Chinese studio Yoozoo Games is the owner of European developer and publisher Bigpoint since 2016, most likely having gained the rights to the Game of Thrones license in the same deal. What remains of Bigpoint’s original vision is a mystery to any outsider, but judging by the initial batch of screenshots, it looked like it was shaping up to be some sort of third-person action RPG.
The rebooted game comes right in time for the final season of Game of Thrones, with a release planned for Spring 2019. With no actual gameplay footage in sight and only a small glimpse of what the game looks like thanks to a single screenshot, we are wondering if the game will live up to our highest expectations. In all honesty, we doubt it.
Why, you ask? Because Yoozoo Games is used to creating games that are often considered quick reskins of previous titles, featuring the same auto-combat, level progression and UI. Besides the League of Angels series, there was Magerealm and Knight’s Fable, as well as a few SLG games without much history – you know, the kind of games where you are a “lord” and rule the land, expand your castle, train an army and sit and wait for hours on end while the buildings are upgraded. Unless you pay to speed up development time, of course.
This is where our fears reside. That Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming isn’t much more than a reskin of the current breed of SLG games, featuring the characters and locations from the show as its biggest (single?) selling point. We fear that automated battles will play a major part, that construction times of your kingdom will become increasingly annoying, and that this game’s potential will be completely squandered.
We may be wrong, and we honestly hope that we are completely seeing the wrong picture. Maybe Yoozoo Games will deliver a high-budget, polished, cleverly designed mix of strategy and RPG elements that will make every fan of Game of Thrones proud. Thus, getting a huge player base and earning tons of revenue from cosmetic-only purchases. We honestly hope that Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming turns out to be a memorable game for fans of the show and neophytes alike.
But we have our doubts.
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