Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown is a city builder/colony management game that, supposedly, features RTS-style combat and deep production chains. That is, technically, true, in that those features exist. However, much of the game feels like an indifferent shrug.
Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown
Developer: Zugalu Entertainment
Price: $27.99 ($9.79 until 7/10)
Platform: PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
For example, there are several starting provinces that all seem to have the exact same starting resources. There’s no reason to pick one province over another that I noticed, aside from aesthetics. The starting resources are Apples, Flax, Hemp, and Herb. Why those? I dunno, man, you gotta have resources and you can make stuff with them. Apples can be food and booze; you can make stuff with the rest. Good enough.
There’s a tutorial but in the sense that your shitty dad technically got you Christmas gifts when he went out for smokes. It feels like “Here’s your caravan, build a keep. Great. Build a stockpile and some harvesting camps.” Does placement matter? Should some buildings be in range of others? Does that matter? I dunno? Kinda? Maybe? Read the help text if you want. I need a pack of Newports.
City builders always have the challenge of finding something for the player to do in the early going, but this is one of the few I’ve played where 90% of the game can be played in fast forward. Most of the game was building some stuff, balancing the labor between buildings, and waiting for something to happen, but then nothing happened. If you have narrative mode on, every now and then, a plot event fires, requiring a choice. Sometimes this results in a reward, like people showing up, or a downside, but sometimes there’s no clear effect aside from the thrill of, I suppose, role playing.
There are deep production chains, but a lot of them are population locked, which requires sitting around waiting for more people to show up. Usually, all you have to do is build housing and wait. Some of the higher-level workers do want luxury items or need supporting structures, so you build those, build housing, and wait. I wasn’t even resource-constrained because I spent so much time waiting for things to happen that my stockpiles were absurd.
There’s a lot of the usual things you’d expect, but it’s unclear why you’d care. There’s a research/tech tree, but the tradeoffs are “You get MORE STUFF but it COSTS MORE” or “THIS is cheaper but THAT is more expensive” or ‘You get MORE RESOURCES but there’s MORE RISK OF FIRE’ and they’re not always worth it. Speaking of fire, the most exciting thing to happen in my first run was that a building caught fire. Nothing bad happened, and one of my dudes put it out, but I dropped out of fast forward in case I needed to intervene.
There’s multiplayer, but each time I checked, there was a single person on with a ping of “TBD.” There’s Diplomacy, useful for declaring war (which I will cover in a bit), but nobody came to argue with me or demand tribute. I did build a trading post, so there is trading, and a merchant did show up, but didn’t have anything I felt I was lacking.
A big running counter at the top called Waelgrim could serve as the plot twist and it’s clear this is supposed to be a big deal, but it lacks the punch or pressure of something like We Are Billions where you know you’re going to get screwed. Weird crystals pop up, but they take a special facility to harvest. My dudes never seemed to care that weird purple crystals were hanging around, and I didn’t notice a malus or negative effect. Sometimes it fires events, but, for example, at one point it made a lot of my food decay, but I had so much spare food from sitting around that I didn’t especially notice.
The RTS/military stuff is supposed to be a big selling point, but, frankly, I saw no reason to even build the military buildings aside from them existing and fielding military units for the sake of doing so. There were no bandit raids or wildlife attacks, much less actual enemy military action. There were also no heavily armed trading caravans of cool stuff to inspire me to gear up and raid them (or even go “oh, maybe I should heavily arm my traders, clearly there are threats out there”). Similarly, there’s a lot of production chains and advanced buildings, but I never saw a reason to build them aside from…the sheer joy of clicking “build”, I suppose..
It was so…unengaging, I decided I had to be missing something. I started a new run with no tutorial, just in case that had me stuck on “safe mode” or something, and turned off the story. The Mets were playing the Braves, so I could sit and watch baseball while I fast-forwarded. I started this one at 8:07 pm.
By 8:49 pm, I had a sizable population and was well into the second tier of workers, and several production chains were running. The Mets were also up 2 on the Braves. Nothing of note had happened except the Mets pitcher getting injured earlier in the evening. Actually, I did have a Waelgrim happen, and some weird crystals spawned, but they didn’t seem to do anything.
After almost an hour of nothing happening, I decided to make something happen, so I bought some spearmen and archers and invaded a neighboring province. I found a building, but when I ordered them to attack it, nothing happened. My army of conquest spent a substantial amount of time wandering around and found nothing to conquer. I finally checked the map more closely and…it was unclaimed territory. Ah. Well. Hmm.
This folly also didn’t seem to be draining resources or costing me much of anything, so I continued. I noticed that the nefarious…EnemyKingdom (this was the actual name) lay to the east and had several provinces. It was a long journey for my dudes, but I was determined. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, we marched. I knew we would battle through adversity, much like the New York Mets battling the EnemyKingdom of the Atlanta Braves after losing their starting pitcher.
By 9:05 pm, my forces were in position. Side note: Please remember that it has been over an hour, and the RTS combat is a selling point, but the only reason I am encountering it is that I forced the issue. It was time to attack, like Pete Alonso of the New York Mets attacking the baseball (he had a good night). I clicked my dudes. I clicked the wall of the enemy city. Nothing happened. Hmm. Well. So much for that idea. Maybe I need a siege engine? You’d think the archers could at least…
But it was only the 7th inning, so I figured I’d poke around and see if I could experience the RTS combat. We found an EnemyKingdom tower! And houses! I ordered my Legions of Terror to attack and…nothing. Hmm. Lemme see here. After poking in the Diplomacy screen, I figured it was because we weren’t at war. Maybe EnemyKingdom was just a clever moniker. But there was a list of towns, so I went through it and declared war on all of them, then tried again. Nothing? Hmm. Well. Um.
AH HAAAA! The first town I’d tried to attack WAS on the list, and we were AT WAR! I marched my dudes all the way back and, finally, it was time for bodies to hit the floor.
In this case, it meant my dudes hung around outside the walls with my archers firing in. I did order my spearmen to attack the actual wall, but I couldn’t tell you if that did anything. The AI didn’t care much. It did have troops but never mustered them or sallied forth. It just waited for me to move my guys in range, then we fired arrows at each other until someone died. By 9:15 pm, all my guys were dead.
Good games have their obvious upsides. Bad games can be interesting in the way bad movies can be interesting. I can’t say I have played a game like this: Thoroughly mediocre in that it has all the features it promises and runs okay, yet I can think of no reason to play it. It is, technically, a city builder/colony management game with deep production chains and RTS-style combat and diplomacy, and it exists. There’s a lot of achievements for a lot of stuff that might be interesting if you felt like sitting around waiting to get enough population to level up and figure out how to get them. On the other hand, the Mets scored a couple more runs late in the game and managed to beat the Braves despite losing their starter, so that’s something.
It’s not always about da money, Spiderman…
The Final Word
I can think of no reason to play this game.
MonsterVine Rating: 1.5 out of 5 – Terrible