Royal Road

In Brief

A fantasy time management adventure.

Introduction:

Break the evil curse and outwit the wicked witch in the game Royal Roads! Are you ready to immerse into the fairy-tale world? It's high time to influence the fate of the kingdom and make the princess Layna a true heiress. A coronation was canceled by the appearing of the old witch who enchanted the princess and sent her to the distant farm far away from the picturesque kingdom and luxurious palace. And when the girl managed to return, nobody seemed to remember her. And the only way to fix the things is to find the witch and make her remove the spell. Travel together with the princess, admire the beauty of her magical kingdom, make new friends, and overcome lots of obstacles in the amazing game Royal Roads!

Reference accessed HERE. 6th April 2019

Installation:

Royal Roads downloads to a 326 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 895 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Royal Roads

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the shortcut to the game, plus three others ''Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and a shortcut to a free online game. These latter three shortcuts can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation; there are details about this issue in the read me that unpacks from the downloaded zip file.

The Game:

See the next comment below by 'A Reviewers' :)

Videos of Royal Roads:

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Steam.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Royal Roads to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Roayal Roads and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Royal Road doesn't doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, heavily discuounted (up to 95%) indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers; she often updates with the latest deals from Indie Gala, the Humble Store and others HERE; plus other community members sometimes post details of free games elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (current deals are usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).

The free game over at Epic Games is now The Witness; a single-player game in an open world with dozens of locations to explore and over 500 puzzles; (worth £29.99/$39.99/€36.99/₽699). Indie Gala have removed some of the games that were available last week and added new ones to their free games list, (at least 20 free games are available via their recently added showcase section) that includes adventure, RPG, Simulation, strategy and casual games i.e. Super Destronaut, Five Nations, False ReBirth, GOR - Gorilla Office Rampage, Home is where Chip is, Age of Fear: The Free World, Die Legende von Saya: Befehl aus der Dunkelheit - (The Legend of Saya: Command from the Dark), What Never Was, The Last Humans: Awakening, Childhood, Dunwell, Safe Not Safe, Hi Hotel, Bugs Must Die, Cuadradito y Circulito, Hellino, Hovership Havoc and Wake Up , or you can find them all HERE. Finally, there are some excellent bargains on sale via Steam HERE.

Royal Roads is your typical build something - collect resources game. This game has 100 levels. I played up to level 11. I had no technical issues, the game presented well and the graphics looked good.

STORY:
The story starts off interesting enough, even though it's not very original. However, beyond the first bit there is no story. The screen at the start of the level tells you about what you need to do on that level and then there is dialogue between the characters that tells you the exact same thing again. Not worth reading.

GAME PLAY:
You can click ahead - and for a large part this game involves clicking and then watching the men run around and do the tasks - I found I was watching the game play itself more than I was participating. Two levels had a lot of clicking in it though to get gold - but it was just click everything, do everything, rather than strategic planning. I question why the princess isn't helping - only the men are doing the work...

TUTORIAL:
The tutorial is hand-holding which is helpful if you've never played a game like this before (slightly annoying if you have). I eventually switched it off as there wasn't anything "new" that I hadn't seen before. They do pop-up a help screen after you've switched it off so that you can get help again. That is a nice touch.

WHY I STOPPED PLAYING:
The developers have created very large characters - the men are giants compared to the buildings and houses - and they've created very curvy roads. I found that watching them run along the roads would make me seasick after a while. Then came the upgrade to use horses - well there's no sight of a horse in the game - but the men then start running very fast - so instead of getting seasick I was feeling quite dizzy. This is a game I'd only be able to play in short spurts for those reasons.

In general, nothing new or exciting up to level 11 ... it might get exciting afterwards - who knows. As a free game, it's worthwhile getting and playing (in spurts.) I think the developers would have done us all a favour by making the roads straighter and the characters smaller.