I have never had much experience with The Witcher games, aside from an extended playthrough of the third title and some exposure to other adaptations. Reigns: The Witcher brings something new to the old franchise, playing into the more comical aspect of the game’s encounters, and it has made its own path in the Reigns style. For that reason, Reigns: The Witcher does an excellent job of capturing the world I experienced during my time with the game.
Instead of the typical hack-and-slash gameplay found in the mainline The Witcher titles, Reigns: The Witcher offers a clever way to tell stories through poetry. The game opens with Dandelion, Geralt’s bard companion, explaining how Geralt will achieve immortality through the legacy of great tales he will tell about, rather reluctantly, Geralt and his misadventures across the realm. With that context for the many ways Geralt is about to die, the game begins.
“Reigns: The Witcher brings something new to the old franchise, playing into the more comical aspect of the game’s encounters, and it has made its own path in the Reigns style.”
The gameplay in Reigns: The Witcher is deceptively simple. As a relative newcomer to the Reigns series, I initially thought the game was simply about swiping cards to craft a story about a kingdom. The reality is more complex. Each card swiped left or right affects four values that shape how the people in Geralt’s stories respond to him: human opinion, inhuman opinion, mage opinion and how closely Geralt follows the Witcher’s path. Each must be carefully balanced, or Geralt will face the consequences.
The types of consequences that affect Geralt vary widely due to a couple of factors. Firstly, situation cards shape the story through a set of stories that Geralt must complete. For example, the card that took me the longest to complete was a requirement to gamble with Geralt’s life, which meant having the opinion values either at their highest high or lowest low without getting a death screen. Others include being nice to rats, making a troll smile, uncovering a serial killer’s plot, or being unable to lie. The inclusion of these cards adds a heaping helping of varied content, making Reigns: The Witcher an entertaining experience on every run.
There were many moments when something outrageous happened because of my choices, and I could not help but chuckle at the scenarios Reigns: The Witcher presents. Most of these scenarios end in combat, and this is where the game briefly lost me.
Combat takes place on a five-by-six grid. Enemies launch attacks from the top of the screen, and the player must strike at the right moment. I struggled with this at first because you cannot pause to plan your move. Geralt’s icon is always in motion. However, once you recognize the columns’ movement patterns and use the screen wrap mechanic, similar to Pac-Man, the system becomes satisfying and rewarding when you succeed.
After playing a good portion of the game, Dandelion will be invited by the local lords and important people to perform for them. These events are basically what the game is about because it lets you use the situation cards you complete with three stars to craft a story according to the lord’s likes and dislikes. On the other end, the deaths you experience throughout the game are also used in this context as the ending to the stories Dandelion tells.
I found myself playing Reigns: The Witcher in a different way than I was expecting. Instead of sitting down and putting 6 hours into it immediately, I instead played it any time I was bored and wanted some quick fun. The “rougelike” aspect of this game really pulls you in, given that it’s primarily a mobile game. Reigns: The Witcher gains a lot from doing a quick run through when you are waiting for dinner to cook or if you’re on a long bus ride somewhere.
“Going into Reigns: The Witcher for the first time made me expect a sort of shallow game about the series, but I was wrong.”
As a sort-of fan of The Witcher series of games, I was glad to see that Reigns: The Witcher brings back a metric ton of characters featured in the games. Some of these characters are well known, like Triss Merigold or Yennefer of Vengerberg, but others featured in the game have origins that can be traced back to the first game ever made. I found myself frequently tracking down the wiki pages for the names of these characters, like Dolores Reardon, who plays an astrologer trying to predict Geralt’s future. Aside from Reigns: Game of Thrones, these are the only games in the Reigns series that benefit from an already established universe of lore.
I also found that, while Reigns: The Witcher was a simple game, the art design did not have to be. As Geralt is technically just travelling around every playthrough, he naturally wouldn’t just have the same scenery. Each day I lasted through brought a new view behind the card-swiping column, where Geralt would sometimes be in a bustling village or a calm, verdant forest. The music also changes with the background as well, adding birds chirping in the forest or just some relaxing lute, presumably played by Dandelion himself.
Going into Reigns: The Witcher for the first time made me expect a sort of shallow game about the series, but I was wrong. In my limited knowledge about the vast world of The Witcher, I would definitely say that developer Nerial has done a good job adapting such a vast series into their format.
