The Succession of Changing Kings – Review – WGB

For me, The Succession of Changing Kings brought back memories of the old-school choose-your-own-adventure books, the kind where you’d make a decision and flip to entry 234 to see how well it panned out. Spoiler alert: it didn’t, because you used the fucking rope like 30 minutes ago, so now you’re screwed. Point is, The Succession of Changing Kings is very much a text adventure in that classic mould.

The idea is that you are next in line to take the crown and be declared king, but before that, you need to serve as dauphin for 444 days. Apparently, very few rulers actually make it that far before dying either by natural causes or catching a nasty case of wefuckingtoldyounottodothat. Yes, it’s a real disease, and entirely fatal.

Structurally, the game revolves around a simple daily loop. Each day, you’re presented with a bunch of events on a small world map, with icons indicating which faction they relate to, and can pick two. You read through the scenario and pick from a list of decisions, some of which are locked behind previous choices, constructed buildings, or hired characters. Sometimes the consequences are immediate, sometimes they might not pop up until later.

At the end of the day, you head to the throne room for a handful of bigger, story-driven decisions. These tend to carry more weight, feeling less like side events and more like the moments that actually shape your rule.

There’s also a management layer where you can spend Initiative to construct buildings like inns, granaries, or barracks, or hire useful figures such as a detective. These can boost faction reputation, tweak stats like health or security, and open up new events and dialogue options. Most of them also slowly drain Initiative, though, so going on a spending spree is a good way to quietly ruin your future.

Initiative itself acts as the game’s core currency, and almost everything feeds into it. You’ll gain it through certain decisions, but far more often you’ll be spending it, whether that’s helping rebuild after a fire or agreeing to a request from the military leader, Bardican. Let it run dry, and you’re in serious trouble, so keeping one eye on your reserves at all times is essential.

As you’d expect, every decision you make is likely to annoy someone. Whether it’s the commoners, the nobles, the church, or one of the smaller factions, keeping everyone happy is impossible. The game quickly becomes a juggling act where letting any one group’s opinion drop too low can result in you getting stabbed, poisoned, hanged, or otherwise removed from the equation—sometimes in a fairly undignified fashion.

That balancing act is made trickier by the fact that faction opinions are hidden unless you unlock a specific upgrade so that you can spy on the cold hard numbers. Annoy the church a couple of times, and you’ll need to remember that and actively work to repair the damage before it comes back to bite you. The game also leans heavily on random chance, with higher difficulties increasing the likelihood of death tied to certain decisions. On easy mode, you at least get a warning when a choice carries a risk of death. On normal, you’re largely flying blind, and that includes some options where you do something that seems entirely safe.

Yes, that does mean you can do everything right and still just die. Randomly. Realistic? Absolutely. Still kind of annoying? Abso-fucking-lutely.

The issue isn’t just the randomness itself, but how unclear its causes can be. Sometimes it’s obvious you took a risk and lost. Other times, it’s difficult to tell whether your death was tied to the decision you just made or something you did an hour earlier. Autosaves usually put you a few in-game days back, so it’s not devastating, but it does chip away at the sense of control the game is trying to build.

There are also a few rough edges that don’t help matters. I ran into multiple instances of events referencing things I hadn’t actually done, like a character talking about a binding promise I never made. It’s not constant, but it happens often enough to be noticeable. And I also noted that at some point in my adventure, the game just stopped using quotation marks around characters’ speech and instead swapped to dashes. What the hell is that about?

Really, this is a game that lives or dies on the quality of its writing and overall narrative. Did I enjoy it? Was I hooked? The answer to both is…meh.

The writing is decent enough on a moment-to-moment basis, and many of the individual events are well constructed. They’re often presented in a way where each side has a reasonable argument, which makes roleplaying a fair and just ruler surprisingly tricky. Sometimes they tilt toward funny, sometimes serious, sometimes thoughtful. It’s good stuff.

The problem is that the broader cast never gets the depth it needs. The three main faction leaders, in particular, feel underdeveloped, which turns most interactions with them into little more than a calculation of which reputation bar needs boosting this time so I don’t get murdered in my sleep. The side characters fare no better, rarely leaving much of an impression. That culminated in one story beat falling completely flat when it was revealed that a character was actually someone else, and my dumbass stared at the computer screen and audibly said, “who?”

That lack of depth also clashes with the game’s systems. While it wants to support roleplaying, everything ultimately comes back to numbers. Sooner or later, decisions stop being about what feels right for the king of ruler you’re aiming to be, and start being about what keeps the right bars from dropping too low. Maybe that’s a deliberate commentary on leadership. After all, when you’re caring for millions, they start to become numbers. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, it does limit how engaging those choices feel over time. I can never properly abandon the church or overthrow the nobles or stomp on the commoners. I always have to keep them at least a little bit happy, rather than taking a hard turn.

To the game’s credit, I did enjoy experimenting in later playthroughs to see what I could change. The problem is that the scope feels smaller than it first appears. On my second run, I tried to side heavily with the mysterious red-hooded group, only to find that I couldn’t meaningfully support them. Even more strangely, the threat they posed seemed to vanish by the end of the first chapter without much in the way of resolution. The more I prodded, the more I found walls. But then again, this is an inexpensive, small project, so my expectations are perhaps unfair.

Still, it left me with the impression that the game isn’t always sure how to respond when you push too hard in a specific direction, which undercuts the sense of agency it’s trying to create. I probably noticed it most during the final chapter, where I could not for the life of me find any way to support a certain character, which was a shame because I had spent a lot of the game trying to set that decision up. And it did feel like the game was laying the groundwork for me to do it.

All in all, the game promises six different endings, along with plenty of smaller variations depending on your choices. Chapters can also play out differently, whether that’s avoiding conflict with a neighbouring country or gearing up for war. But while there’s clearly variety on paper, I didn’t find enough unique events to keep repeat playthroughs consistently engaging, which makes seeing everything it has to offer feel more like a chore than a reward. Again, though, the scope is understandable.

Look, there is an undeniable quality to The Succession of Changing Kings. It’s cheap as chips and has a surprisingly cosy vibe—right up until the point where you die because you decided to go ice skating. Yes, that’s a real thing that can happen. Cosy, but with occasional, abrupt reminders that your life expectancy is apparently terrible.

Mostly, though, this feels like a strong foundation rather than a fully realised experience. There’s plenty of potential in the core idea, and you can absolutely see how a sequel could build on it with deeper characters and a more engaging overarching narrative. As it stands, though, it’s a little thin in those areas, which makes it harder to stay invested over the long haul.

Every now and then, however, the game does land a moment where a past decision comes back to bite you, and in those flashes, it shows exactly why the concept works. It’s just a shame those moments aren’t quite frequent—or impactful—enough to carry the whole experience.