By Royal Request

By Royal Request is a game about establishing a supply post in a clearing two days from the castle. You play the newest and least important person at court, sent there with a cart and a map; nobody sees you off. The castle remains on the horizon, and the only road back is the work of building the post.

The crown’s requests

A courier brings letters from the crown, which Odo—a toad who has held the post for eleven years and does not work—reads aloud. The requests begin with wood and stone, move on to planks and squared stone, and end with gilded cuirasses and jewelry for the king’s table. There are ten letters, and the final one brings the ending.

Make and carry supplies

Materials are physical objects, not resources held in a shared supply. Logs, bars and planks lie where they are made, and you carry them to where they are needed, an armful at a time. To order something at a counter, you first place the order for free; this only sets what the counter is waiting for, so you still have to bring it the materials. Your satchel limits how much you can carry, and each upgrade to it makes a noticeable difference.

You can place a building on any open ground, even before you can afford to build it. An unfinished site gives you a place to bring the next armful of materials. Learn recipes at the tinker's stall and hire workers at the tavern to speed up work at the benches as the clearing grows into a camp, with a smoking forge, a running saw and twenty people where grass once stood.

A continuous camp

There are no enemies, combat, fail states or deadlines. The game has no prestige or resets: you keep one camp and one save for a continuous run from the first pine tree to the summons home. Production stops while you are away, but nothing is lost; the camp waits as you left it. If you fall short of a request, the materials you delivered are kept and the rest waits.

Camp contents

• Nearly forty materials, from pine logs to steel seamed with crystal.
• Around thirty recipes to learn, each feeding into the next, from raw materials to refined materials and then the goods requested by the crown.
• Workshops to build, workers to hire and dozens of upgrades to order.
• One screen that stays the same and keeps growing, with no map to cross or loading between areas.
• Pixel art, a soundtrack and autosave.