Reigns: Beyond

Reigns is a strategy video game. Players control a medieval king and must make decisions to make their tenure as monarch last as long as possible. Various advisers, represented by cards, approach the player with petitions and questions. The player chooses between two responses to the supplicant by moving their card to the left or right. For example, a player could accept a request by moving the card to the right, or reject it by moving it to the left.

Each decision has an effect on the power of one of the kingdom's four aspects: the army, the people, the church, and the king's wealth. These aspects are represented by meters that are filled and emptied based upon the player's decisions. For example, the player can provide assistance to a witch to fill the meter representing the people, at the cost of the church's power.

The player character, an unnamed King appearing to be suffering from memory loss, meets a ghost called the Spirit of the Fallen. The spirit tells the King to be a wise and pragmatic ruler and to reign for as long as possible. After the King dies, he is reincarnated as a new ruler and encounters the spirit again, who tells him that they are both cursed to be reborn after death. After several reigns, the King is visited by the Devil in the year 666; the demon taunts the King, revealing that the monarch traded his soul centuries beforehand in exchange for eternal power, though the Devil was able to manipulate this wish by trapping him in a cycle of death and reincarnation.

The Devil reappears in 1332, telling the King that there is no end to this cycle, and that he will visit the King a final time in the year 1998. Some time before that date arrives, the King meets a noblewoman called the Senator who knows of the bargain he made with the Devil. She tells him the only way to annul the deal is to force the Devil to attempt a task that he cannot fulfill.

Reigns was developed by the London-based games studio Nerial. Developer François Alliot was considering leaving the games industry after several failed projects, and pitched the game's concept to publisher Devolver Digital. The company's associate Nigel Lowrie enjoyed the game's demo, presented it to the rest of the staff, and Devolver Digital arranged a publishing deal with Nerial. The developers were especially influenced by the dating app Tinder, which influenced the swiping gameplay.

Alliot wanted to make a game that would "mock the way our societies tend to deal with complexity" and drew comparisons between the game and the Brexit referendum, opining that the Brexit decision was as simple as swiping a card but had lasting political consequences. The earliest version of the game placed the characters inside portraits, but the developers quickly substituted these paintings for cards, as they felt that players would be used to moving cards around, thereby removing the need for a formal tutorial.

According to the review aggregator website Metacritic, Reigns received "generally favorable" reviews for its iOS and PC versions. Reviewers generally considered Reigns a fun and unique strategy game. TouchArcade found its gameplay to be interesting and inventive, and Pocket Gamer said that it was "a clever subversion of strategy and casual mobile play that makes you laugh, cry, and think". In contrast, The Guardian felt that Reigns was more of a whimsical experience than a serious strategy game.

Critics debated the game's presentation. Rock Paper Shotgun said that it forced the player to alter their approach to rulership, as it changed him from being an idealist who wanted to make moral decisions, to a pragmatic monarch who would work to stay in power. Other reviewers opined that the game was about finding ways to balance the four aspects. TouchArcade said that the game was humorous and weird, adding that it embraced these elements through its premise and presentation.

Nerial released a standalone sequel to Reigns titled Reigns: Her Majesty in December 2017. The game sees players take control of a queen consort instead of a king. Her Majesty received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic. A third installment in the franchise called Reigns: Game of Thrones was launched in October 2018.

The game is based upon the Game of Thrones television series, and was created as part of a licensing deal between Devolver Digital and HBO. It received "generally favorable reviews". A fourth installment called Reigns: Beyond was released for Apple Arcade on 6 November 2020, and for Windows and Nintendo Switch on 17 April 2024. Beyond centers around a group of aliens in a rock band as they travel the galaxy to look for venues to play at.