King of the Castle is a a medieval politics party game, sort of like Jackbox-meets-Dungeons & Dragons. Or, as I always describe it, like Game of Thrones as performed by the Monty Python crew.
The host takes the role of the Kingdom’s monarch, while the other players - at least 3, but up to 24 in Party mode and several hundred in Twitch mode - each take on the role of a scheming member of the nobility, trying to advance their own interests and those of their region. Most of the gameplay consists of voting for options in Council, bidding your personal gold in auctions, or hurling the Kingdom into civil war when you don’t get your way.
It is very tongue-in-cheek. The Coastal Patricians can start a crazy for “jewelled crabs” that are absolutely not poking fun at NFTs, with the expected economic consequences. Two nobles can start a feud over a ‘sacred’ polar bear. Someone has been cursed by a witch and has to be confined to a cold iron box in the dungeon for a week. And that can all happen in a single turn.
I’ve been playing the game for almost two years, and making mods for the game for the last year and a bit. The setting has surprisingly deep lore, and we’ve been having weekly RP sessions online and writing fiction, drawing art, and composing and recording songs in between games. I feel any game that gets people to write songs deserves a recommendation.
I do have a bit of a self-centred reason to recommend it, as well. One of the mods I’ve worked on is a bug-fix patch. Except there’s no point linking it, because last week it got promoted to official game update.
Admittedly now I’m getting all sorts of bug reports sent to me, so I’m sure there’ll be a bug patch 2.0 at some point in the future.