Sovereign Tower

The older I get the more I find comfort in doing chores. A majority of my friends find chores to be annoying. Designed to waste their time among personal plans or more important tasks. Some tasks are assigned by other people who just don’t wanna do it despite possessing the skills to do so. I find chores relaxing at times as they get my mind off of the monotony of real work. Putting away laundry, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, vacuuming the carpet, etcetera. It’s nice to be a commander of my own ship. Gallantly instructing the tools at my disposal to carry each job out with ease. Growing better with time & being proud of what you all together have accomplished. At least that’s how I see it. I wonder if this is the best way to explain or if I sound insane. Point is, there’s enjoyment found in performing small tasks whether it be for the betterment of yourself or others. Hence why there is a whole video game genre known as management games. Taking care of multiple systems and tasks to eventually reach an end goal. “Isn’t that a lot of games?” is what you’re probably thinking right now and for good reason. Yes, there are a lot of games with management systems baked in. Some good and some there for the sake of being there. 

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood lets you set up shops around Rome, collect income, and use said income to buy more shops to make more income. Yakuza: Like A Dragon having its shareholder minigame, which was way more complicated than people expected. I remember the time I had to dump in to unlock a laser to defeat the final boss easily. You could also consider the inventory systems in RPGs. Choosing what gear to equip, how it affects stats, what to buy or sell, and the list goes on. A lot of games have management, but I’m talking about titles completely focused on the concept of management. The game that always pops up in my head first is The Alters. To be honest any of 11 Bit Studios’ games fit the concept of management games easily. As you gotta juggle resources, relationships, and make difficult moral choices to survive extreme conditions. Time and stress are always weighing down on your shoulders, but eventually you pull through & get to survive another day. Factorio is another great example. A friend gifted it a while back, so I guess I should play it at some point. Build giant factory lines, transport vehicles, reactors, and terraform the f*ck out of a planet so you can build an escape vessel home. The perfect games for those who want to go missing for three months. Step outside shortly after, and disintegrate into ash upon meeting direct sunlight. Otherwise, what Skyrim did back then to people.

Management games are pretty cool and I’m slowly understanding the audience they’re made for. Not to say it’s a genre for everyone, because there’s multiple systems at play and that can be too stressful for some. I enjoy management, so imagine how excited I was when Steam suggested to me a fantasy management game called Sovereign Tower. Developed by Wild Wit Games who had previously made Crown Gambit and Aetheris. Both being very niche, and you’d expect the third project to fly under the radar as well. Surprisingly it didn’t, as it’s now their most successful title to date and currently sits with an overwhelmingly positive user score on Steam. Making it fall under the small percentage of games to be seen as a masterpiece. Reviewing recent releases has been panning out for me, so why not another? Beg the bartender for another drink and see if this is the one to knock me into a nice comfy slumber. Indeed it did, because Sovereign Tower is not only a game I really loved but it’s one of the best games of the year. Despite its small scope and budget I’m surprised how much thought was packed into Sovereign Tower. How every system meshes well together without ever feeling too overwhelmingly or shallow. The writing, colorful cast of characters, and choices make it a compelling RPG even though it feels and plays similar to a visual novel. It oddly reminded me of Dispatch, but if that game put more effort into the core gameplay loop and relationship with characters. So let us gather along the roundtable and discuss why Sovereign Tower deserves your attention.

Story

There once lived a wise sovereign who led the kingdom of Britannia atop a high abode. A tall tower so high it looked as if it could reach the heavens. This sovereign maintained peace among numerous regions, distributed wealth fairly amongst the rich and poor, and commanded the best knights in the land to protect others. All was well until a stranger known as the Kingslayer came. A creature of multiple eyes and demonic powers. With the ultimate plan to cut the sovereign to pieces, and bring upon a new age. A new future where others would compete for control, power, and influence. The sovereign evacuated all citizens from their tower before accepting their fate. Several decades pass and the tower once governed from is sealed off. Divine power restricts all inhabitants of the land from entering, but the one chosen by the gods will be granted access. One shall be chosen to become the new sovereign and bring peace once more, and luckily that day is today. You’re a figure who wakes up in a burning church. You’re gravely wounded with no good recollection of how you got there. All you can do is flee from the fires and the attackers who had started this madness. Soldiers led by a tyrannical government simply known as the Empire. You manage to escape safely thanks to a feline guiding you to safety. Your weary legs can longer take running, but you end up at the doorsteps of the sacred tower. Civilians and scholars are busy as they once were several years figuring out how to enter.

Your mind being curious as ever decides to touch the key, and once done the doors swing open. A new sovereign has finally been located, and that person is you. Someone with no knowledge of how to govern, make risky moral decisions, and no knights to serve. Still, the people gather together to give you a cloak, mask, all that a proper sovereign needs. Standing beside you is Arlin, the royal advisor, and together you two will hopefully address the many problems the people of the land hold. Whether it be conflicts among the locals, rulers wanting to join your rulership, or knights just wanting to find purpose in the world. All choices come with their own consequences. Just hope you make the right one, and if not then maybe find ways to undo them. Ancient power lies below, and you might have to loop back again and again until the righteous choice is made. Good luck my dear sovereign. The tower stands tall with a watchful gaze, and we pray you can as well.

Gameplay

Your journey through Sovereign Tower centers around planning and decision making. The game has cycles or in this case days. Cycles are divided into two parts, those being the morning and the afternoon. The morning sees you sitting upon your throne and talking to the line of people going out the door. These include the locals, rulers or their representatives, or knights wanting to join. Each time a new person walks up you’re given a plethora of dialogue choices. It’s important you pay attention to what a person says, because sometimes responding inappropriately will lead to results you don’t want. The majority of people in line will ask you to assist in a task they have. A monster is terrorizing, there’s public dismay, an item needs to be fetched, the list goes on. You can choose to deny these, but more often than not you either can’t deny or it’s better to accept. A few times though you can find alternate solutions to a problem. There’s a meter representing the liking nobles, commoners, scholars, and lawful folks have for you. These side stats can increase or decrease depending on what quests you complete, or dialogue choices you make. If they are high enough you can open up choices that either eliminate having to do a quest, or makes more people happy. Avoiding violence, angering specific folks, or throwing your knights into conflicts they can’t handle with their current stats and equipment.

Once the attendees are gone you leave the throne room and transition into the afternoon. This is where you meet up with your roundtable of knights and assign the tasks you were given. Every mission has a limited amount of knights you can send, time it’ll take to complete, and level for stats. These stats include strength, wit, charisma, luck, magic, and agility. If a mission has one or two stats that are medium range or high then it’s suggesting you send knights who are skilled in those categories. For example, the starting knight Angelica starts off with pretty high agility and luck, so send her on missions with high levels of those stats to increase the chances of success. Missions also have descriptions saying what a knight will do. Knights possess likings & dislikes. If you send them on a mission they’ll enjoy more your bond grows with them. The same applies to what dialogue options you make when having private conversations. The game gives you the info needed to succeed, but it also hides it. Some liking/dislikings are not shown, so it pushes you to get to know your knights. Missions will show some stat level difficulty, but not all of ‘em. Meaning there’s some risk, so do you send knights in the shown category or evenly split stats. Sometimes you just gotta take a risk, because even if they fail a mission they still get experience points. Mission results tally up once your knights return, and the higher the success meter is the less damage your knights take. Failing leads to no mission rewards.

If a knight takes too much damage they will die. Buried ten feet below so they can rest in peace. If this occurs you can either continue forth without them, or rely on your time rewind powers. A demon sits beneath the tower and grants you the ability to go back to previous days. Undo any of the choices you made, and replan what to do before missions. It’s a mechanic that the game tries to convince you to utilize, because you may want to make different moral decisions or prepare for future events better. Level up knights with more manageable tasks, or make different choices when accepting tasks. Maybe spend money gained from taxes to purchase better gear. Such as a potion to increase a knight’s stats for one mission. Weapons that also contain stat boosters that can be mixed and matched between knights. Horses which do the same, but can also increase the rate for which your knights complete a mission. Allowing them to return earlier and now have a different strategy for future missions. Especially missions with deadlines usually assigned by the ruler of regions. People want to join you, and if you fail in their assigned tasks they’ll abandon you. Earning allies is of the utmost importance, because more land means more taxes. The more taxes means more money. The more cash on hand the more easily you can afford gear needed to help your army of beautiful lads. People you want to see live, grow, and form close connections with. Whether that be friendship or the romantical sense. You can be very romantical in this little game. Big focus on romantical vs horny.

On certain days a boss figure will enter the throne room. Declaring that on a specific day you’ll have to face them in combat. Failing to defeat these bosses may lead to terrible consequences, so it’s why accepting as many tasks as possible is important. Gain alliances, unlock gear, and help your legion of knights grow so they may be better suited for when the disaster day strikes. Send them into the field, and cross your fingers that they all don’t get instantly slaughtered to pieces. They either win or lose. You get a choice to move onto the next week or rewind time, but if you choose to move on then your progress is locked. You must live with the consequences. Build up from a loss, or watch your kingdom grow thanks to wonderful helping lads. Very beautiful lads to remind you. Besides that there’s not much else to say. Sovereign Tower is a well crafted albeit not overly complicated management game that’ll see you cranking away for hours. Attempting to create a perfect timeline where everyone gets to live happily ever after. A peaceful end for all to rest beneath.

Thoughts

This is going to be an unfair comparison, but the game Sovereign Tower reminded me mostly of was Dispatch. The big cinematic sensation of last year, but now with a smaller budget and scope. What’s surprising to me is that Sovereign Tower is a better version of Dispatch. It does not have the cinematic presentation, voice acting, or animation of Dispatch but everything from the design and writing is miles ahead. I don’t know when the Sovereign Tower began development. I cannot tell if it started before or after Dispatch. Who was doing this style of management game first, and if one was inspired by the bigger title. However, to see this game come out one year after the big one was released and be miles ahead in my opinion is amazing. Especially since there were less people working on it, and you can clearly see the limitations. The game was made using Godot and is mostly composed of drawings. Some of which look like sketches and are what my sibling refers to as, “Very mid-2010s Tumblr”. Not to say that’s a bad thing, because this game has great art direction. You know a game’s style is genius when you can know exactly what type of person they’ll be just by looking at them. Gwendan pompous smile and golden armor. Stars flickering in the air. Signaling to me this was a nepobaby who talks more than what he can actually do. Turns out I was slightly wrong, because Gwendan started proving himself in the tasks he completed. The fact I was able to predict the information. Sovereign Tower is a similar to Hades in that character portraits are enough. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt if the devs of this game love Hades and drew a ton of inspiration while making this game.

The game contains a lot of vibrant colors, but not to an obnoxious extent. I love art direction that is colorful more than bleak, because we’ve got too many bleak games in the past. However, I will admit some games go overboard on what is on screen. Sovereign Tower is calming to look at and it’s very nice. Elegant music carrying through each day. Matching the time period this sort of universe would take place in. Going back to what I was saying earlier this game feels like a more fleshed out version of what Dispatch could’ve been. Not saying I hate Dispatch. If you read my review last year I showered the game in heavy praise. It was one of my strong recommendations of 2025, and I granted it a 10/10. As a reviewer you realize not all opinions stay the same and are bound to change with time. Some opinions age poorly, but usually for me I gain appreciation for the games I enjoy. I can realize flaws I wasn’t able to see before but the amount of love I hold is the same. Dispatch might be one of few games I played where my appreciation went down. It’s still great, but there were ideas I wished it indulged in more or just wanted better writing. One of my disappointments was failure to build connection with the characters. With such a wide cast of characters it’s a shame that Dispatch mostly centers on connection with one team member. Then choosing to prioritize a weirdass love triangle that’s honestly kind of gross when closely looked at the work position you and the love interests are in.

This game handles your connection to knights better both in gameplay and in writing. The core loop of sending knights on missions is one where you’re always taking risks. You could send the knights with stats that’ll increase the chances of success, but sometimes the task of hand contains stuff they hate. Lowering your relationship and progress towards unlocking traits. Quirks or in this case personal perks that may help knights on missions. Stat suggestions don’t show you all the stats, so you just gotta take an educated guess. Cross your fingers & hope luck is with you. I like how the game encourages experimentation and the amount of room it gives you. Failing isn’t always bad as you still earn experience points. Your knights will grow stronger and your chance of winning in the future goes up. The game even says playing it safe isn’t always good, because you got the big story events against bosses. Individuals you need to be really strong for otherwise you face horrible consequences, or watch half your units get whipped out. You have the factions who give you deadlines to complete tasks, the side missions, and it leads to your team being busy all of the time.  The time rewind mechanic is one I think multiple people will be mixed on. Either due to the repetition of always starting over, or the fact failure isn’t something you always gotta learn from. Yet, I appreciate and love they kept it so when you do make the right choices and succeed in a near impossible task it feel incredibly rewarding.

I believe someone said there’s a whole secret scene if you manage to beat the game without ever relying on time rewind, so that’s really cool. I love my whole crew of knights and my bonds with them. You get ten slots max by the end, but there are a lot of knights you can meet across your playthrough. Adding a ton of replayability as you’ll meet knights you missed out on. For me my legion consisted of Angelica, Goberto, Ursula, Gwendan, Gideon, Ligia, Childeric, Zolta, Oliver, and Ari by the end. All of whom I love to death. Everything from their background, personality, interactions, and just bonding. Spoiler, but I really love Oliver’s questline. A burnt out man who at one point was studying magic, but due to family problems at home he had to give up. Forcing him to take on the role as a knight, and spend countless hours grinding away. Not only do you have a man who was forced to give up on his dreams, but bend a knee to everyone. Leading to a timid person who can’t stand for himself and is constantly anxious. When he reveals to you how he wasn’t able to fully attend university you get the choice to send him back. You can pay for his tuition, he’ll come back in a few cycles, and when he does his personality changes. He’s more confident in himself, speaks fluidly, and is thankful for how you helped make his life better. You even get gameplay benefits as his magic stat once low before is now extremely high. It’s a great reward for players who chose to pay attention and spend the extra time to talk to people. The result of indulging in content that is normally just optional.

The overall gameplay and interactivity of Sovereign Tower is superb. As with most management games it’s not for everyone. There is a lot of micromanagement, and the game dumps a bunch of systems onto you early on. Leading to the opening hour feeling pretty overwhelming. Once you wrap your head around it everything is pretty refined. Systems click well together and I would say it’s one of the most approachable and accessible management games made. The final aspect that I want to address is how romance is written. I never fully cared for romance in games. From either the artificial aspects, or the fact some games are just very horny. To a point romance can be more annoying than enjoyable to interact with. Sovereign Tower has my favorite love writing not because they’re my favorite relationships, but it understands the difference between horny & being romantic. The first feels in your face. “You, me, in bed, now!” Horny is about reaching the end fast even if it means being too assertive. Romantical to me is well paced, calm, and subtle at times. I don’t just love how conversations are written, but how the relationship with your chosen knight is led into. I remember romancing Gideon, and when he asked me to forever love him it tugged at my heart strings a bit. Combined with knowing who and why he is the way he is. Huge warning, don't try to romance multiple people at once. I did that and it led to one my bonds dropping to zero, so that led to a quick rewind.

Well that got kinda weird didn’t it? The only other complaint I have is that the ending I chose felt a bit underwhelming. The big final boss steps forth, but due to the missions I had completed I had a peaceful option available. One where I gave them an item, we shook hands, and the credits then rolled. Everyone lives happily ever after and I thought to myself, “Huh, that was really anticlimactic for everything I was preparing my lads for.” I was stressing how hard the final boss would be, so I wanted my knights to be the best they could. Only for that to be the end, and the credits don’t really tell you the consequences of choices you made with factions. What it does tell you though are the fate of your living knights, and how your actions have or haven’t helped them so that’s still lovely. Despite that I consider Sovereign Tower a management masterpiece. It is one of my game of the year contenders for 2026. If you want to get into management games it is a fantastic place to start as it nicely combines the genre with RPGs and visual novels. It’s also another example of how games can be great while not always having the conventional means of what a video game is. Whether it be this, Citizen Sleeper, Slay The Princess, Esoteric Ebb which I had covered recently, and the list goes on. It’s just a wonderfully made work of art.

Strongly put together gameplay systems alongside well done writing. The main story itself is not the best I’ve seen, but the character relationships are what make playing this game worth it. Well done to the folks at Wild Wits Games. I look forward to what the future holds next and if they can outdo themselves. I give Sovereign Tower a 10/10 for being incredible.

10/10, Incredible