We’re back with one of my favourite Tower Defense Roguelikes: The King is Watching. The reason being is simple: a new update, Shifting Sands, is about to drop tomorrow, on June 11th, and I had the opportunity to preview the patch ahead of its official release thanks to the folks at tinyBuild and Stride PR. Unlike last time, all of the content here is free, so you’ll be able to play it too provided you also own a copy of the game.

That said, what all has changed in the Shifting Sands update?

As it would turn out, quite a bit. So, let’s delve into exactly what changed, and what that means for existing, and new players.

In keeping with the last time that I covered The King is Watching, I think the easiest place to start is with the big ticket item: the titular Shifting Sands. This newly added desert themed map acts as a bit of a melting pot. Ostensibly, it’s akin to a fully randomized game mode, but it’s been introduced as a new map instead. As such, you’ll be able to hash it out with enemies, bosses, and events from across the game, which usually results in absolute pandemonium.

As a brief example of the craziness, you could get saddled with Sir Mortifax as your first boss, and Ashfeather as your second. This will cause your early game to be dominated by thawing out your frozen forces, only for them to all stand unreasonably far apart thanks to the blistering heat during Ashfeather’s tenure. It’s exactly as bonkers as it sounds, and only gets more wild when you add all the other bosses to the blender of possibilities.

Though it wouldn’t truly be a new map without a handful of new baddies, and Shifting Sands delivers on that front. The newly introduced Fennecs are, I believe, some kind of ancient race of horned demon. They’re all a massive pain to deal with making them a great accompaniment to the existing menagerie of baddies that you’ll be squaring off against.

That said, hosting a wide array of potential encounters isn’t the only unique gimmick on offer with the Shifting Sands: it also features modular difficulty. Instead of having 10 threat levels, each with different modifiers that heightens the challenge, you’ll be able to fully customize which modifiers are in play each time you play Shifting Sands. In this way, the additional difficulty for this newly added level mirrors the experience of something like Hades wherein players mix and match their preferred modifiers to craft their ideal experience.

Some of the myriad difficulty modifiers that are available in Shifting Sands.

Or you could blindly slap several of them on with reckless abandon, which is what I did during my first run. I was a little more thoughtful with what I was, or was not using in subsequent runs so I could lean into the specific strengths of the given commander I was playing. That made for some extremely satisfying meta-gaming once I was able to secure a victory at the end of the run.

Though, I wasn’t just mucking around with these newly added modifiers because I wanted to see the full depth of what was on offer during my brief preview window. No – I was after some of the prizes on offer for players who’re willing to tackle higher levels of challenge.

You see, each modifier has a score value attached to it, which contributes to a cumulative score. When your score exceeds a certain threshold, and you complete the run then you’re awarded a handful of prizes. The bulk of these are additional modifiers, but developer Hypnohead have also cordoned off the newly added cosmetics, Blueprints, Advisors, and spells as rewards for tackling ever higher levels of challenge.

Example of some of the rewards on offer in Shifting Sands.

Honestly, I’d have attempted the higher difficulty without the incentive, but I was a lot more keen to take additional punishment knowing that there were prizes up for grabs.

It’s also worth noting that you’re able to utilize this modular difficulty system across the other levels in the game too, though without the prizes. This becomes available once you’ve finished a given level on Threat 6, and it’ll allow for further customization of your play experience across the game.

As someone who rather enjoys modular difficulty, this is the piece of the latest update that I’m the most keen on. I’ll admit that the various Threat levels do provide a fairly meaningful challenge, but I much prefer customizing my own difficulty level with a variety of parameters. It really helps to fine tune exactly the level of challenge you’re up for at a given moment, while also allowing you to potentially build a difficulty that plays into a particular character’s strengths.

I dunno. There’s just something really satisfying about making, and beating your own custom challenge modes.

The final major change is one that doesn’t explicitly affect me, but it will, I think, be hugely beneficial to new players: revamped progression. After numerous rounds of feedback, progression has been reworked in its entirety to offer players a much smoother first-time experience. 

The first of these changes is that all skill tree nodes that formerly awarded new units, spells, or structures have been completely reworked. They’re now progression rewards for completing Threat Level 1, 2, and 3 on the first 4 levels. This will provide some much needed incentive for new players to begin experimenting with the higher Threat Levels, which is where The King is Watching really starts to shine.

The newly reworked yellow skill tree in The King is Watching.

This change also has the dual benefit of no longer requiring players to waste upgrade materials unlocking new content from the skill tree. This means that players can freely spend their first several hundred coins passively buffing themselves, or unlocking additional Advisors. This will likely result in a much smoother power, and progression curve throughout the early game that’ll hopefully feel less grindy.

Plus, Hypnohead has also made rerolls, and bans easier to come by in the red skill tree, which should make penetrating higher threat levels a lot easier for players of all skill levels.

All said, Shifting Sands seems to be a pretty rad update with a lot of changes targeted at both quality of life, and long-time player requests. The titular map is very fun to play if only because of how much concentrated chaos is present in each run, and I can see the changes to unlocks having a huge impact on the first-time experience. Furthermore, funny hats! I love a good cosmetic, and these don’t even require a nominal purchase. Huzzah!

If you’d like to check out Shifting Sands for yourself then all you need to do is purchase, or reinstall The King is Watching on, or after Thursday June 11th. By then the update should be live for everyone.

Again, I’d like to thank the folks at tinyBuild and Stride PR for giving me an advanced look at the latest update. Fingers crossed I’ll also have an opportunity to preview The King is Watching’s third and final planned update later in the year.

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