Dare to dive into the challenging world offered in Sultan’s Game. This card-based game will test your strategies and moral compass as you go through. See what to expect from Sultan’s Game with this review. 

A Game of High Stakes and Hard Choices

What seems like a simple premise eventually turns out to be more challenging. Sultan’s Game core gameplay revolves around completing tasks assigned by Sultan within seven days. Failure to complete these missions results in your execution. The game cards have varying rarities from Stone, Bronze, Silver, and Gold under four categories: Carnality, Bloodshed, Conquest, and Extravagance.

Players have to carefully allocate their resources, allies, and time each day as they work on completing their objectives. It’ll put you in tough situations like seducing high-ranking officials or orchestrating an assassination. It can even make you choose to lead a military campaign. 

All these carry consequences that will make you reflect on your choices. Moreover, this game doesn’t shy away from mature themes such as sexual content, violence, and stylized nudity. 

Stunning Visuals in an Arabian Nights Setting

One of the stunning aspects of Sultan’s Game is its visual presentation. It draws inspiration from the popular One Thousand and One Nights which delves into the lavish aesthetic. This showed through the gilded cards and character designs, as well as rich color palettes. Further, the playing event map is striking with its deep red color, evoking atmospheric play. It represents the intimidating and threatening court of the Sultan.  

Plus, the aesthetic perfectly blends with the soundtrack featuring haunting melodies and dramatic crescendos. However, there are occasional audio glitches where the music doesn’t suit the current situation in play. Yet, the developers can easily resolve this in future patch updates.

Roguelike Elements and Challenging Gameplay

Similar to other modern roguelikes, this Sultan’s Game Review observes a meta-progression system in the game. The Fates allow players to enhance their starting cards or event details between runs. Each completed week lets you earn points you can use to unlock allies, equipment, and resources. Also, you can refine your strategy and approach through this system allowing for better gameplay.  

For fans of card-based strategy games, this might feel familiar to the likes of Cultist Simulator. However, Sultan Game brings a unique twist by letting you assign specific cards to missions each day. Besides, you may use supplementary cards such as Secrets and Intuition to increase dice roll success. 

For some missions, it may take multiple days to complete and drain players of resources until they’re resolved. Some players may also face some difficulties in learning the game before getting the hang of the game. There are mechanics where it has a limited explanation, leaving players alone to figure things out by themselves. 

Technical Issues and Frustrations

Yet, this Sultan’s Game review also experienced some technical issues and flaws in the game. One of them is the translation where the mission text remains untranslated from Chinese, making it difficult for players to understand. Then, it also has user interface issues like events spawning underneath others on the game board. With this, players have difficulty interacting with the game alone. 

Also, the game heavily relies on RNG or random number generation which makes success dependent on luck. Given this, several reports claim to experience unusually high frequency of receiving difficult high-tier cards at the beginning of runs. This can make the progression feel unfair for some players. 

Other than these, the random mechanic and slow grind of earning Fate points create a monotonous feel in the game. It may seem repetitive across multiple attempts throughout.

Should You Play It?

This new entry to roguelike card-based strategy games is definitely attracting attention from the gaming community. Sultan’s Game offers plenty of room for exploration along with improvements from several reported issues. Yet, the visual and soundtrack makes an ambiance truly unique, fitting the gameplay. This Sultan’s Game review should help you decide on whether to play this title or let it sit on dust for a while.