Crowns Edge | Medieval Kingdom-Builder with Live Invasions

Why it's different

Your population are people, and people keep score.

Most kingdom-builders treat population as a number that eats and produces. Here every one of them works, prays, drinks, gossips and remembers what you did to their family.

Every villager is simulated

A house, a job, a wage, traits like Fearful or Pragmatic, and separate Happiness, Loyalty and Faith. Click anyone and read their whole life, down to what they ate this morning.

Politics that bite

Peasantry, Nobility and Clergy judge you separately. Rule by fear and Dread keeps them in line for a while. Rule unjustly and Tyranny climbs, protests fill the streets and your own Guards start plotting.

A crown someone else can steal

Another player can join your game as one of your own villagers. They rob houses, recruit spies, join your rebellion, or put on a Guard's uniform and wait for the King to turn his back.

Top features

What you'll actually be doing

The Throne Room

Hold court in person

Double-click the Keep and you're inside. The same goes for churches, taverns, the market and the prison. Petitioners queue down the carpet, kneel, and ask for gold, grain or justice. Give it, refuse it, have them thrown out or have them arrested on the spot. Word gets around.

In the rain, the executioner stands on the Scaffold beside the Keep saying Justice is served, while the crowd below mutters They had it coming and Justice done

Inside the Hall of Justice: three Justicars on their thrones call Bring forward Githa of house Wyvernhall as the shackled accused stands at the dock

The prison's row of barred cells, two prisoners in the first while a jailer walks the corridor

Crime & Punishment

Trials, cells and the Scaffold

Justicars try the accused in the Hall of Justice and sentence them to prison, exile or death. Condemned men are marched up the Scaffold's steps in front of whoever gathers to watch. Or skip the trial and Condemn someone yourself. It works, and everyone is a little more afraid of you afterwards.

Inside the Church: clergy at the altar beneath the stained glass, candles lit, and villagers walking up the red carpet between the pews

Faith & Family

Weddings, Mass and the next generation

Couples marry in the Chapel: a Priest at the altar, the bride and groom saying their vows and their family in the pews. Churches and Cathedrals say Latin Mass for the faithful, and the Clergy judge you by how full those pews are. Children are born into their houses, grow up, and one day marry too.

The aftermath of a gang fight in the streets, with bodies in the square and the event log reporting the Bramblewick Boys wiped out

The Underworld

Gangs that fight to the last man

Gangs form around their richest member, feud with rivals and go after your Guards when you push them. When they fight, they fight to the death, and your Guards run toward it. Some nights the Guards lose.

The invader's arrival briefing: playing as Osbert, a ruined merchant, with rumours about a disloyal villager, a local gang and twelve Guards on the streets

Multiplayer

Invade a friend's kingdom

Drop into someone else's game as one of their villagers, with whatever job and gold that person had. You get a briefing on who's disloyal, which gang runs the streets and how many Guards are watching. After that it's up to you.

Rule a kingdom. Survive the people inside it.