Swipe Left or Right to Rule a Kingdom in This Tinder-Like Strategy Game

If there is a modern curse, a pox on each of our houses, it's probably Tinder: the universally loathed yet wildly popular dating app. So how appropriate is that in Reigns, a new game coming out on Steam and mobile, you are forever cursed to manage a Middle Ages nation through the two-swipe Tinder system. Instead of swiping to say "sure" or "meh" to local strangers, you're swiping left or right to make decisions that will make or break your kingdom. No pressure or anything.

Reigns is a charming and casual ongoing adventure. A hybrid between The Yawhg, a graphic adventure about trying to be heroic in the face of certain doom, and the inter-generational 2D action game Rogue Legacy. Instead of playing as just one kings, you play as many who rule through the ages of the kingdom.

Kingdoms will rise and kingdoms will fall, and the issues your subjects approach you with will all start to feel like Groundhog Day. In your decision making, typically yes or no swipes, you need to keep four elements satisfied: the church, the populus, the army, and the treasury. Decisions that appease all four demographics are few and far between. If any ever hit rock bottom you will be, at best, dethroned, though being impaled by a viking and sent off to the dungeons is also on the menu.

I was a good king in

Reigns

. I served on the throne for a diamond jubilee's worth. Swiping right to build food stocks to prepare for harsh seasons, swiping left to stay out of needless wars and power grabs. All good things must come to an end, however, and when my purse ran empty from all the infrastructure and military I was building, the merchants rose above me and shoved me into exile. Some of my lifetimes as king didn't go so well. I swiped right to tell some delegates to watch over the reaches of the kingdom only to learn they were dumbasses, and swiped right to promptly deal with a series of priest bitings that later turned out to be the beginning of a lycanthropy crisis. My shortest tenure was worse than William Henry Harrison's 32-day presidency, when I fell to gangrene I contracted during a wild boar hunting trip. On. My. First. Day.

Try not to sweat the small stuff in Reigns, your kingdom will live on without you, your bloodline is ultimately cannon fodder for a bigger picture. Reigns wants you to put your swiping skills to good use instead of whatever pitiful exercise in socializing you were currently using them for.