Tightly designed new city builder The King is Watching just keeps getting bigger

Overseeing an ever-growing sprawl can be a highlight of city-building games, but the truly memorable moments in everything from Cities Skylines to Frostpunk come from having to build within tight restrictions. It's this concept that new city builder The King is Watching is founded upon, dramatically limiting the space you have to work with at any moment and forcing you to make tough decisions about what to prioritize. Ironically, this formula has proved so popular that the new indie game just won't stop growing on Steam, and developer Hypnohead says there's more to come.

The King is Watching takes the fine-tuned balance of the best city builders; finding that sweet spot of resource generation, production facilities, unit training, and population management. Then Hypnohead tightens the belt by limiting you to a tight, five-by-five grid of usable squares within your castle (and sometimes cuts that even further). Finally, it pours over that delicious roguelike sauce, challenging you to hold out as long as possible against a surprise selection of attackers and milestone boss battles. It's a loop that immediately hooked me when I played it prior to launch, and it appears to be a real winner now.

The King is Watching launched at the start of the week to an incredibly respectable 4,746 player peak on Steam; very good going for a new indie game. By a day later, however, this had more than doubled, reaching a high of over 10,000 active users, and that upwards trend continued through the week; by Saturday July 26, it was up to a top count of 15,777. All of this, while sustaining a very positive Steam review score from players, goes to show that there's some real magic in there.

If you're curious, there's a free demo that you can try right now. Keep in mind that the full game offers even more, with a total of seven different sovereigns, each of whom bring unique skills that affect your strategies. King Spellus, for example, passively generates arcane power and can summon up random spells, while troops under the command of the pale King Alucard have a 50% chance to rise again as undead when they're killed, giving his armies vastly more sustain.

Beyond that is a second playable region, the Graveyard Kingdom, which offers more sinister foes and a separate set of potential boss encounters, alongside a wide list of additional building and unit options that didn't make it into the demo version, and a wealth of new and improved encounters that will force tough choices upon you.

"A huge thank you to all of you, noble kings, for your incredible support," Hypnohead writes. "Since the game's release earlier this week, you've been setting new records every day for the number of simultaneous rulers in the kingdom, and we've been hard at work implementing your feedback and improving the realm." A first patch has already rolled out, adding an option to increase game speed during combat, reducing the crystal cost of upgrades, and having ascension crystals auto-collect when you move to the next threat level.

The King is Watching is out now on Steam, priced at $13.49 / £12.79. If you're quick, there's still one day left on its 10% launch discount, and you can also download the demo if you want to try it before you buy and see what all the fuss is about. "The King is Watching's story is only beginning," Hypnohead continues, saying it's currently "planning two to three post-launch updates, shaped by your royal feedback."

Alternatively, we've rounded up the best indie games and the best management games to make sure you'll be spoiled for choice.

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