Crown Siege: an eight-euro incremental siege game, honest about its length

The store page's first line sets expectations, and the studio deserves credit for it: a short incremental siege game.

Short. It is written down. Plenty of games in this genre prefer to talk about infinite content and let the player discover the truth six hours in.

What you do

You spawn troops to protect your kingdom. You cut down goblins and other delights to earn gold. Every wave pushes your defences a little further.

You earn experience, level up your units, and claim crowns to unlock upgrades that strengthen your army and your tower.

Then you battle across a fantasy land, facing unique challenges, testing your build and conquering new realms.

It is the classic incremental loop applied to tower defence, and it is perfectly legible.

What works

It is immediate. You understand everything in two minutes, you progress straight away, and the sense of growing power arrives quickly.

It is one-handed. The game is fully usable with a mouse, with a touch option, which makes it exactly the sort of thing you leave running in a corner of the screen.

And the price matches the content, at 8.49 euros.

What limits it

The game shows 40 positive reviews out of 54, roughly 74 per cent, which is decent without being exciting, and matches what the proposition can reasonably promise.

The genre's problem is well known and it applies: an incremental is judged on what it makes you want to do once the numbers turn absurd. A game announced as short has the merit of honesty, but it also inherits the consequence, which is that it ends.

If you want a curve to climb for weeks, this is not the candidate. If you want something to run for two or three evenings for the pleasure of watching a small army become enormous, that is precisely what is on offer.

A word finally on the presentation: it is cute, it is colourful, and it does not try to pass for something else. In an aisle where many games dress up as major productions to sell three mechanics, that modesty is welcome.

How many waves before you hit your first wall? We compare on the InsertCoins Discord.