Enter a world of death, lust, and extravagance when you play Sultan’s Game. As a loyal member of the Sultan’s court, you are forced to play a game for his entertainment. The game is as cruel and unforgiving as the Sultan himself. Will you be able to beat the Sultan’s game or die trying? Let’s jump in to see if this game is worth playing or if Sultan’s Game is too cruel to handle.
In this review, I will be going over the following topics.
- Story
- Gameplay
- Difficulty
- Sultan’s Cards
- Characters
- Daily Rituals
- Intelligence and Items
- Fate’s Ledger
- Conclusion
Story
The Great Sultan has indulged himself in everything within his reach to the extent of boredom. Until one day, a sorceress comes to him with a magical game that only great and powerful sultans are worthy of playing. Intrigued, the Sultan plays the game and beats it in record time without any care for the consequences of the game. For he is the Sultan, what consequences could he possibly have?
Viewing the devastating results of the first time the Sultan played the game, you decide to speak up and try to stop the Sultan from playing again before he destroys any more of the kingdom or his court. You are relieved that the Sultan agrees with you, that is, until he decides to force you to play the game for him instead. Now you must play this brutal game and break a card every seven days or be executed for not obeying the Sultan’s orders.
Gameplay
The main premise of Sultan’s Game is to get through the deck of enchanted cards. You do this by fulfilling the card’s requirement within seven days of drawing it. The Sultan has exonerated you from all crimes that you will commit during your time playing the game. That doesn’t mean the rest of the people you interact with will forgive you. You might not even be able to forgive yourself. You have to decide if you will get through the game while trying to keep your humanity, or if you will give in to the game completely. Either choice is going to be a dark path to weather.
Difficulty
Let’s start off by talking a little bit about the difficulty of Sultan’s Game. If you haven’t caught on yet, this game is quite hard and mature in theme. It is also quite cruel and difficult, which is fitting for the theme. Luckily, there are three different difficulty settings to choose from when you start a new run. I would highly recommend starting with the easiest difficulty when first playing the game. Here’s why.
The three difficulty settings primarily adjust your odds of successful skill checks, how many times you can swap out a sultan card in seven days, and most importantly, how many times you can roll back to the previous day if something undesirable happens. Primarily, your death.
Events in Sultan’s Game are random. This means that every game will be different, but it also means you are going to have to experiment a lot during your first couple of playthroughs. There isn’t a lot of hand-holding, and that can make it quite challenging for some people. If you start at the lowest difficulty setting, then you are able to try something out and roll back to the previous day if things do not turn out the way you were expecting. Which they usually don’t.
Sultan’s Cards
Every sultan card that you draw from the sorceress’s box will have a tier and a type. There are four tiers and four types. These will determine how you will be able to break the card and move on to the next one. The four tiers are stone, bronze, silver, and gold. The four types of cards are carnality, extravagance, conquest, and bloodshed.
You must fulfill both the tier and the type requirement of the card in order to break it and move on. The tier requirement does have some flexibility as you can use it on someone of equal to or higher tier. For example, if you draw a silver bloodshed card, that means you are required to kill someone of silver or gold value. Killing someone of bronze or stone value will not meet the requirement, and the card will not be broken. Often, the game will just not let you use the card if it does not meet the requirements.
Characters
There are a few different options for your character when beginning a new run in Sultan’s Game. Depending on the background that you choose at the beginning of the game, you will start with you, your wife, and either a loyal noble follower or three slaves. There are benefits to both. The noble follower can go places that slaves can’t; however, having three slaves means you can get more tasks done in a single day. Regardless of what you choose, you will be able to gain additional followers during your story, depending on the choices that you make.
Each character has a character sheet with their various attributes. Your characters can increase their attributes by reading books, performing certain tasks, or equipping items, which we will talk more about later. On their character sheet, you can also view what tier that person is for meeting sultan card requirements and any tags they might have, such as noble or slave.
You will want to make sure you pay close attention to your character’s attributes when assigning them to tasks. Some will be better at certain things than others. You might also want them to focus on something they are already good at or learn something new when they are reading books.
Daily Rituals
Just because you are playing the Sultan’s game doesn’t mean you don’t still have your regular duties to manage. You still have daily tasks such as managing your estate and attending the Sultan’s court. There are also regular locations that you can frequent often, such as the bookstore or the public bathhouse.
All daily rituals and most other events will have a skill check against one or more of the assigned character’s attributes. You will roll the dice equal to the number of points that the character has in said attribute. If you roll a set number of successes, then you will pass the skill check. The number of required successful dice is dependent on the event.
Aside from the recurring daily rituals, random events will pop up from time to time. Some of these will need to be managed directly by you based on your position in court. Others might also be a good opportunity to use your sultan cards on. Such as using a Conquest card to defeat some highway robbers. As you get further in the game, there will be more and more events that pop up. Events often have a timer on them showing how long you have before the event goes away.
Events also have an activation time that shows you how long it will take to perform that task. Make sure you pay attention to this time in particular. You don’t want to send someone to do a task only to find out the next day that they are going to be gone for a whole week, and now you are shorthanded. You don’t want to be short-handed in Sultan’s Game if you can help it.
Time management is key to a successful playthrough. If you skip something important, like visiting the Sultan’s court each day, there will be dire consequences. Make sure you are using all of your followers to the fullest.
Intelligence and Items
Aside from the character cards and the sultan cards, there are also a handful of other types of cards that you will come across while you play. The most important of these are intelligence cards and item cards. Both of which affect your character’s attributes during events.
Intelligence cards are one-time use cards that range from stone to gold tier. They usually boost two attributes of the character attending the event. They also allow for rerolling your dice during a skill check. The higher the tier, the higher the attribute boost and number of rerolls.
Items also give your characters a boost to their attributes. These ones don’t have a limited use, though, and can be equipped by any of your characters. Items are nice for adding a few more points to an attribute you already have or maybe one your character is lacking. You are free to swap around items as you see fit. Some characters even have an animal handler ability that allows you to equip an animal for an even bigger boost.
Fate’s Ledger
The Sultan’s Game can be quite brutal and unforgiving, especially when you are first getting started. Fortunately for you, the fates keep a ledger of your past lives. You will be awarded fate points from performing certain tasks while you play. These fate points can be used to unlock boons for future playthroughs. These boons include things like special items, increasing the tier of one of your followers, or even boosts to your main character’s attributes. They are not cheap, but they can make a big difference.
Conclusion
With all that said, is Sultan’s Game worth playing, or does the game’s theme get in the way by making it too cruel to play? Well, I will start off by saying, as I did before, this game is dark and mature in theme. The game is tough, and so are the choices. If you are looking for something dark and mature that lets you make those difficult decisions, then you will want to check this game out.
Sultan’s Game is quite unique and not like anything else I have played in a while. One of the things that sold me on the game early on was the art style. I absolutely love the look of all the cards and the characters. Even all the locations look rich and elegant. Yes, the game is about death, lust, and cruelty, but it is also about humanity.
You can choose to kill random people and sleep with whoever you want. However, the game also gives you the option to still keep your humanity and only use the cards for good when you can. You can try to sleep with just your wife and only kill the people who deserve it. Will it be easy? Of course not. But the option is there if you want to try.
What I enjoyed most about the game is the freedom that the player has. Sultan’s Game really encourages you to experiment. However, the freedom can also be its downfall for many players. Sometimes it feels like there are just too many options with no direction. The randomness of everything can almost be too random sometimes.
You might draw a gold-tier card at the beginning of the game. You do a couple of redraws, and your last redraw ends you back at a gold-tiered card again. You have no way of breaking that high of a card at the beginning, so your run is just over. That can be quite frustrating when you feel like you never had a chance in the first place.
I think that Sultan’s Game will be very enjoyable for the right person. There is a lot of depth here if you take the time to explore everything. It is certainly not for everyone though. If you are interested in checking out the game more, head over to their Steam page.
A review code was provided by the developers at Double Cross.
