The Steam Next Fest may be long gone, but I keep noticing some really good games that passed me by, so we’ll finish it in style. This time I’m covering Thronefall, and I can’t believe I didn’t play it earlier.

High-level RTS gameplay is exhausting to look at and generally involves watching someone switch screens every three seconds with some insane macro awareness, but Thronefall is a minimalistic take on the city-building strategy game genre.

Thronefall‘s approach is casual and relaxing, as it focuses way more on the decision-making aspect of the genre instead of heavy real-time multitasking, map awareness, and unit control.

The gameplay exists between cycles of day and night; during the day, the player gets to build their houses, farms, barracks, watch towers, and gates, and at night, your defenses will be tested by large waves of enemies.

Thronefall starts off relatively slow but eventually ramps up into waves with a few hundred enemies per night, which can get overwhelming fast if you make some bad choices. Thankfully, troops mostly move by themselves, so the player doesn’t have to multitask a lot.

There is a certain element of troop control since the player can tell their soldiers to stand still in a specific location, but they can also roam freely to help in whatever fight they are needed in.

The player also doesn’t have to worry about optimal positioning for their structures since the game already has predetermined locations for every building, so it’s only a matter of building and upgrading what you need.

Each map has a few levels with their sets of challenges and unique requirements. Some challenges even involve adding mutations to enemies, which will make them stronger in various ways.

These challenges will certainly help a lot with the game’s replay value, but even the available level in the demo makes it easy to see that the game will ramp up exponentially as the player moves through the map.

Thronefall also has a leveling system that lets the player unlock new weapons and troops to spawn in the barracks. The weapons have both a passive effect, which attacks enemies automatically, and an active effect, which unleashes a more powerful attack.

Moving through enemy hordes as the kingdom’s ruler is very fun, especially because the player is really agile due to moving on horseback and deals a lot of damage. The weapons feel great, largely due to their effects and sound design being really good, with my favorite one being the spear.

Thronefall may not cater to the hardcore city-builder RTS players, but as a casual enjoyer of the genre who struggled way too much just to see the main story in Warcraft 3, I enjoyed it a lot.

You can watch me play Thronefall‘s demo below:

Something to note is that Thronefall is an Early Access title. I don’t know if I’ve been on a lucky streak, but it feels like every Early Access game I have checked out recently was very polished and bug-free, with Thronefall continuing to follow that standard.

I’m really excited for this game’s final release, and I especially want to play around with whatever new weapons the developers come up with. Thronefall has a really simplistic and addictive charm, similar to the Kingdom series.

Thronefall is set to come out on August 2nd, 2023 for Microsoft Windows (through Steam’s Early Access).

If you want to know more about some upcoming games, take a look at some of the other titles we covered from this year’s Steam Next Fest.