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Review
Adapted from an IFCOMP25 Review
There is a saying, “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Imperial Throne is the polar opposite of this. IT asserts, “When you see a nail, grab your screwdriver, because hammers are for SUCKERS!” The hubris of this is kind of breathtaking. Never mind common carpentry practices, I know it’s not a screw but BY GOD I’m using a screwdriver anyway. IT basically implements a kingdom simulator in parser. This is a simultaneously reckless and compromised choice and I kind of love it for that. To a point.
Most impressively, the game implements a variety of verbs completely appropriate to the conceit, way deeper than it needed to be. “Ally with” “Censure” “Trade With” “Promote” and my favorite “Marry” These all drop like giddy surprises from your interactions with the game, like Santa’s sleigh exploded overhead and the subsequent deluge of gifts is yours, all yours. To even try this: to implement insanely open ended ruling proclamations as unclued parser syntax that the player must trip over, and to so frequently reward these things. Every time it worked it provided a jolt of wonder that has so long been buried by decades of encrusted parser conventions. Like the first time you ‘talk to npc’ expecting nothing but actually getting simulated dialogue!
It also has at its disposal a daunting array of (perhaps randomized?) military, political, economic and religious events to manage, respond to and prioritize. Despite its very large scope, it never really devolved into repetitive text, events or challenges. Nor did game state become confused and contradictory (excepting perhaps regarding a royal betrothal). The impression of an evolving geopolitics was practically seamless. This is also an amazing accomplishment!
It is with deep sadness that I must conclude, despite those two VERY strong assets, that the game’s reach escaped its grasp. More, that this specific empire-resource-management and event-mitigation gameplay is not only ill-suited for parser paradigms, but it cannot help but bring to mind gameplay paradigms MUCH better suited. I say this with lingering, deep admiration for the HEROIC effort IT made to assert otherwise. Here’s three reasons I say this.
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Notwithstanding my admiration for the game’s vocabulary, over a full hour of gameplay not only did the vocabulary let me down more than it rewarded, the joy some baroque verbs generated made the simpler gaps WORSE. I can “Execute” but I cannot “Jail.” I can “Raise” but not “Recruit” I can “Attack” but not “Send Ambassadors” I can “Promote” but not “Reward” and so on. All of which needs to be discovered through traditional parser trial-and-error. In some sense, by rewarding so many wild verbs, we end up trying so many MORE things than we might otherwise only to come up empty. It is a paradox of raised expectations!
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The game implements an empire geography of regions, each with a garrison of troops and a leader with strengths/weaknesses, as well as bordering hostiles. As text descriptions. This is something a graphical game would just present as your gameplay cockpit, adjusting it for game state, probably with some cheeky thematic artistry to set the mood. Here, I had to ask enough questions to extract information, then draw it on paper. This is not awful, by the way, scratchpad noodlings are a pretty good way to increase my engagement. However, this paradigm is crippled with super dynamic gamestate that requires multiple commands to suss out what changed, then manually update them. Constantly. It pretty quickly became drudgery of probing new information for legion counts and evolving border relationships, then updating my increasingly crowded and scribbled out map. And could not help call to mind how EASILY this would be implemented in a graphical interface. Or a boardgame of wooden pieces.
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Most egregiously the command space opacity intruded into gameplay in one CRUCIAL way. Despite spamming the command prompt for 20 minutes, I could not figure out the magic command to move legions from anywhere besides the capitol, to redeploy them where needed. This had the effect of me watching vulnerable borders getting chipped away, while rested masses of troops resolutely REFUSED to go to their aid. This infuriating gap was exacerbated by cluing text that read: “You could try moving troops from a different province.” Could I? COULD I??? Well boy, I sure did TRY and it never never never worked. I am sure, in the finest guess-the-verb parser tradition, there was a way to do it, but I never found it. Eventually, I just threw up my hands and Z’d my way to inevitable defeat. An ignominious end to my empire and my gameplay session.
So at the end of it, what am I left with? Immense admiration for the hubris of the thing, shot through with Sparks of Joy whenever left field commands were rewarded. That ultimately succumbed to the weight of its screwdriver-driving-a-nail baggage.
Played: 11/6/25
Playtime: 1hr, lost empire
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Notable Implementation gaps
Would Play After Comp?: Probably not, would just grab a hammer
Artistic/Technical ratings:
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
