The Royal Writ review for PC

While I’m far from an expert when it comes to the world of roguelike deckbuilders, thanks to my love of Slay the Spire and neverending quest to find something that scratches the same itch, at the very least I can say that I’ve played my fair share of them. And with that decent – but by no means exhaustive! – amount of experience, I can say this: The Royal Writ is like no other roguelike deckbuilder that I’ve ever played.

You can see this in the Steam reviews for the game, where games like StS and Balatro get the odd mention, but that, for the most part, emphasize how unlike anything else The Royal Writ is. This, for better and for worse, really defines the game. You build your deck and you send your subjects off to war for the glory of your kingdom…and you spend run after run after run trying and failing to get the hang of things, because the game is so unlike the more obvious touchpoints.

Of course, this highlights the main problem with The Royal Writ: its tutorial is practically useless. Even playing through it carefully twice, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. It throws concepts at you but doesn’t really explain them, in a way that almost makes the game seem hostile to newcomers.

Once it clicks, though, it becomes a lot more fun. I mean, it was a gradual process of clicking for me, so the game became more fun fairly slowly, but once I figured out that the point of The Royal Writ – at least in the first half – is to maximize your attacks before your soldiers run out of turns (which was surprisingly harder for me to realize than you’d think, which may just say something about me), it became much clearer what to do. It’s a feeling out process to see what combinations of attacks work best against which enemies, but when it comes together, it’s a lot of fun.

And then, naturally, The Royal Writ switches gears halfway through and pushes you into a second campaign, which is exponentially harder. The first half of the game is tough enough with its environmental hazards, but the second half – when enemies start fighting back – really puts you to the test and makes you change strategy. I’m not even going to pretend I’ve come anywhere close to beating this second half of the game, but I will say that if you want a deckbuilder that really challenges you, you’ll get that here.

And even if you don’t, you’ll still probably want to give The Royal Writ a try. It’s rare to see a game in this genre – or any genre, really – that defies easy classification, so in a world where everyone wants to be the next Slay the Spire or Balatro, it’s fun to see something try (and mostly succeed) at doing its own thing.

Yogscast Games. provided us with a Royal Writ PC code for review purposes.