[Review] Swag and Sorcery

[Lunix I]

At first, Swag and Sorcery seems like a streamlined version of your average city builder, but it quickly proves you wrong. At its core, Swag and Sorcery is a more robust idle RPG experience than it lets on.

Its story is nothing to write home about, though, and it knows it. Problems are arising in a faraway kingdom, and the king refuses to take his advisor’s advice. The king seems to think that his great-grandfather’s “magical costume,” which was stolen years ago, will solve all the kingdom’s problems. His advisor, not very pleased with how his king is treating him, decides that he would be a better ruler for the kingdom. The majority of the narrative involves the advisor devising plans to sabotage the kingdom so that he can be king,It’s like a colourful, tongue-in-cheek Game of Thrones.

Honestly, you don’t have to pay attention to the story if you don’t want to. It won’t take away from your experience. However, there are some charming bits and pieces here. The banter between the castle’s black cat and the narrator of the story, who often breaks the fourth wall, offers a couple of good laughs. For some reason, only a few characters have voiced lines of dialogue and others only have text boxes, which can be a little jarring. But the voiced lines that are here are pretty great.

Most of the gameplay revolves around purchasing new characters and sending them out into the world in search of quest items and loot. As you level up your characters, they’ll be able to take on tougher enemies. And tougher enemies mean better loot. The mechanic of sending your soldiers out is entirely idle. All you have to do it make sure they’re happy (by sending them to your village’s spa) and make sure they’re healthy (by sending them to your village’s church) beforehand.

Lazy Bear Games and Uroboros Games absolutely nail the idle aspect of this game. The quest bits don’t take too long, so you won’t find yourself waiting around for your soldiers to come back once you’ve sent them out. As you progress through the story, the game opens up more characters and up to three quest lanes, meaning you can send multiple soldiers out on quests at once or stagger your questing so someone is always out collecting loot while you craft the materials you need back at the village.

Crafting is also well-executed, but there are a couple of issues with it later on. Specifically, the tedium of gathering the items you need to take on the almost overwhelming number of options you have. A lot of the game’s beauty is rooted in how every item has a use. It never adds something to your inventory that you don’t need. It’s simple—ores and wood are at the core of everything you craft. But that’s where it starts to become overwhelming.

It never feels like you have enough items to complete the tasks available to you, and the process of prioritizing isn’t very fun. It’s nice to consistently have something to work toward, but that initial decision-making seems unnecessary. If there were just two or three few options at any given time, it would be a little easier to get past those bits and into the fun part of the game faster. However, these issues are easy to get past once you get a handle on them. As you progress, you’ll start to understand what your own priorities are, and these decisions become easier.

So far, it seems like a lot of sorcery, but where does the swag come in? Well, right off the bat, you can tell the people of this kingdom are a little too concerned with how they look. Appearances are everything, hence why the king thinks a costume can help solve all of his kingdom’s problems.

Early on, one of your tasks is to build a fashion house. This allows you to compete in costume competitions where you can earn cash—used to upgrade your characters and purchase new ones—and fancy new loot. Your success in these competitions is dictated by your character’s clothing.

There’s trouble in the kingdom (as always), though the king doesn’t want to dispatch a horde of troops or develop grand strategies. Instead, he believes a magical suit can save the day. The only problem is, it has been stolen.

And so your adventure begins. Tasked with locating the magical suit, you’re going to need to develop your town, recruit a load of soldiers, and explore every nook and cranny of the surrounding lands. Only you won’t actually do any adventuring at all.

Different competitions have a different set of judges and each set has different preferences. Sometimes they prefer green clothing, others like a more casual look overall. The clothing items you have equipped to your characters have different appearance attributes, so your best bet is to align those to whatever the judges prefer.

This part of the Swag and Sorcery is just plain fun. It’s a little stupid and out of left field, but it’s really enjoyable and adds another layer of differentiation onto the entire package. It can take a while to craft the clothing you need to succeed in some of these competitions, but the rewards are worth it.

Overall, Swag and Sorcery is a great game. There are a few kinks along the way, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously and offers some truly fun gameplay. It’s definitely worth your time and money.

In Swag and Sorcery, you play more of a managerial role. A string of introductory quests get you up to speed with activities such as crafting, training your men and sending them off to battle, and then ease off to give you some breathing room. Though completing quests as they appear is still a good idea, as the rewards are rather invaluable.

While you’ll start out with just one soldier to look after, eventually you’ll be able send out multiple parties of three. Adventuring for you is a laid back affair. Your soldiers will simply move from left to right of their own accord, only stopping to gather resources or fight enemies. And you don’t need to issue them any commands. The only time you need to step in is if you think they’re in mortal danger, in which case forcing them to retreat is the best option. You don’t want to loose your loot, after all.

Back in your town, your soldiers heal automatically, but you can speed up the process by visiting the church and spending some coin. It’s always wise to give them a rest at the spa, too, raising their mood so they perform more efficiently. And of course, all those resources you gather while out adventuring can be put to better use by turning them into equipment.

The loop of adventuring for loot and then improving your soldiers back in town is an addictive one, but it’s one of the more unusual features of Swag and Sorcery that proves to be the most interesting: fashion shows. Every once in while you’re able to dress up a few of your soldiers in their best threads with the hopes of winning over a panel of judges. Succeed and you’ll earn respect. Lose, and you’ll just have to accept that you don’t have style. Either way, it’s an amusing way to spend a few minutes.

Of course, Swag and Sorcery has a story running through it as well, and like the rest of the game it’s mildly humorous. It all adds up to a rather easygoing affair that you can play at your own pace; a game that you can dip in and out of for just five minutes at a time and still feel like you’ve accomplished something. So basically, if you’ve been craving a streamlined RPG that doesn’t demand you to crawl through dungeons for hours on end, you should definitely give it a go.