Lone King

Lone King is a simultaneous-turn-based tactics game in which you command a single mech against a small army. Its controls are inspired by chess: choose your Maniple and give it one order, where to move. Attacks, abilities, hacking and environmental effects trigger contextually, while each Maniple has different movement and attacks.

Missions and encounters

Levels are randomly generated, with changing combinations and positions of enemies, enemy abilities and terrain. Matches are designed to last around 5–10 minutes. You can customise the setup or remove game modes, stages and characters from the random rotation.

Story and station

Two story chapters are available. They lead into the ending of one story and the beginning of another, with simple cinematics. Between missions, you can return to the station for a brief first-person point-and-click experience, meet the characters and explore your base of operations.

Game modes

All-Random mode lets you remove game modes, locations and characters from the random rotation. In Custom Setup, you can choose the default game mode, location and character. Campaign Mode has eight missions, one in each stage; you choose which Maniple to deploy on each mission, and cannot reuse a Maniple. Rescue missions let you save fallen Maniples, while retreat protocol lets you escape to the exfiltration point to avoid falling.

Campaign Mode includes eight stages with distinct environmental hazards, terrain styles and aesthetics, as well as eight game modes. These include modes with or without boss units or normal enemies, waves of respawning enemies, destroying the VIP and a testing mode. You can play with multiple characters together, but doing so comes with a health penalty.

Units and difficulty

The game has eight player characters, each with unique weapons, movement, and active, passive and defect abilities. Campaign Mode adds two active abilities to each character. Its eight enemy units have distinct weapons and equipment, including missiles, shields, mines, backup weapons and cover that can block your path. There are also eight enemy boss units, which are harder to kill and pose a greater threat.

Eight difficulty levels introduce character weaknesses, new enemy abilities, mechanics such as enemy pathfinding and weapon lock-on, and increased environmental hazards.