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Over the last few years, I’ve become a pretty big fan of base-building/city-building type games — well, basically, any game that requires me to have god-like control over villagers or NPCs. There’s just something about being the single difference between life and death, starvation and surplus, and good and evil that really speaks to me. However, just as there are moral lines drawn in the sand for in-game decisions, there’s another for their execution; the line between boring and fun.
Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown has finally left early access and has turned the feedback it’s received into fun gameplay and an impressive UI. I very much enjoyed my time, and though it isn’t exactly a departure from what is typically known of the genre, Heavy Lies the Crown stands out with easy-to-navigate windows, simplified yet detailed gameplay, and a relatively replayable story.
Strategic Growth With a Human Touch
The gameplay for Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown is very similar to popular titles like Manor Lords and Anno 1404. You’re tasked with managing resources like food, water, and more, caring for your villagers, and ultimately expanding to create culturally fluent and robust cities. In the background, a story is poised to help you navigate how best to succeed in the face of adversity, which typically means not getting absolutely hammered by enemy factions or surviving against harsh conditions as you expand your influence in the direction of growth and success for your kingdom.
Because of the focus on expansion, I was quickly gripped by the gameplay. The tutorial doesn’t throw the entire rulebook in your face all at once, but still gives you everything you need to know to start building massive structures right out of the gate. I easily found myself switching between structures, prioritizing builds, creating orchards and gardening areas, and moving through the motions of basically being a kingdom planner within moments of starting.
There were various issues concerning gameplay such as accidental deletion of structures that had not been selected, or the removal of villagers that had been stationed in particular areas. However, I wouldn’t say that these issues tragically impacted my experience, though I acknowledge how it could for some players.
Thrive Beyond the First Playthrough
Some games within the city-building and survival genres tend to lean in one direction; they’re either more focused on ensuring villagers survive (whether that be emotionally, physically, or both) or how your structures and builds affect one another for a cohesively rich kingdom. Both of these tend to affect a game like this’s replayability and growth in a single save.
Because there is more than just the single map you select at the beginning, I found that I could easily get sucked into growing my kingdom larger and larger. I will admit in not having done an entire replay of the game, though I felt that the story did allow for replayability as the various decisions you can make allow you to go down different narrative paths. There is also a multiplayer aspect that I’ve yet to try, though it allows for players to create their own separate cities within the same map, allowing for joint decision-making or endless feuds.
Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown is available for PC.
