Reigns review - Swipe right?

There have been many great and renowned rulers throughout history. Reigns is your opportunity to see how you may have fared.

Reigns, available on Android, iOS, and PC, is a kingdom simulation game in which you make choices year after year by swiping left or right. While your feelings may draw you one way, Reigns throws a spanner into the works with four elements - the church, the people, the military, and the treasury - that you must keep balanced, or at least from falling too low or hitting a peak.

Every choice that you make can affect up to four of these, positively or negatively. While the game will tell you which of them will be impacted and how great an impact it will have, it never informs you if it will boost it or cause it to fall. In some cases, it's quite obvious and repeated instances of an event over time or over different playthroughs will inform you of how best to progress given the standings of the four elements at that time. But sometimes your choice could have a rather different effect than you might have expected; military choices seem to be the biggest culprits of this.