This blog post is meant to describe the full story the player is meant to experience in “True King (prototype) – Heir To The Resurrection.” The story is written here because the game, in its incomplete state, may not allow the player to experience all of it, including the intended ending.

This blog post has spoilers to the story, read at your own risk (eh, it’s not a groundbreaking story, don’t worry too much about it).

The story of “True King” is experienced through cutscenes, primarily at the beginning, and minor in-game cutscenes and dialogue throughout. The player learns more about the setting by exploring and talking to NPC’s.

Set in the fictional kingdom of Renatus, the King (Kenneth Renatus) and Queen (Iona Renatus) rule in a central castle, surrounded by eight villages (Glen Town, Port Town, Mountain Town, Iron Town, Arbor Town, Lakeshore Town, Valley Town, Mineral Town). The royal family are descendants of the original rulers, originally from one of the towns (which one it was long lost to memory), decided through a process long forgotten. The royal family is beloved, and the kingdom largely lives in peace, isolated from external lands. However, a royal advisor inside the castle, Alastair, resents the complacency and refusal to prepare for inevitable invasion from external, unknown forces.

At night, a few days after the King and Queen give birth to a child (but not yet publicly revealing the gender or name of the new heir), they are mysteriously murdered, and the child lost (the body never found). In their absence, Alastair takes the leadership role of the throne, christening himself Alastair Renatus, starting a new era that might be the start of a brand new royal family. His rule is more strict, with a greater focus on allocating resources to preparation of armies for these external forces of which there is no evidence of. The people of the villages distrust Alastair, suspecting him to be responsible for the death of Kenneth and Iona, and not appreciating his new order of rule. He becomes known by the people as the “False King.”

The player begins playing eight years after the death of King Kenneth and Queen Iona. The player can customize the name, gender and appearance of their character. They appear in the world by walking out of the lake near the outer edge of the land, near Glen Town. Early on, a mysterious villager offers a tutorial to the player on how to play the tactical portion of the gameplay.

Upon seeing the player, the town’s villagers believe (based on a genetic birth mark) them to be the child of Kenneth and Iona, the “True heir” of the kingdom of Renatus. In addition to the birth mark, obtaining the Sacred Royal Gemstone would also help prove the player’s birthright, but it was broken and scattered across the land after the death of Kenneth; the player can collect the eight missing Sacred Shards in the open lands of the kingdom to recreate it as a whole gemstone (this task is not necessary). The player can initiate a tactical battle at each town to liberate them from the castle guards assigned to each post: upon winning, you can take the surviving units from that town and use them in subsequent tactics maps (at other towns or at the castle). At any time, the player can initiate the final battle at the castle with their collected units (can be after the eight towns, or after just one). The castle is made up of four back-to-back strategy maps, with no opportunity to gain new units.

Meanwhile, King Alastair hears rumors of the lost heir resurrected as a young adult and gaining followers across the kingdom. He is concerned, believing that he had successfully killed the child at the time he killed Kenneth and Iona, but regardless of whether the player is an imposter or not, he believes his army can deal with them when they eventually challenge the castle.

If the player fails in defeating the castle (either by losing a battle at one of the towns, or at the castle itself), they die, and time moves forward eight more years. Surviving units from each town grow older, randomly dying of old age, or having children that make up a new generation (the life-cycle of a unit is four to five of these generations). Death is permanent for these units, and killing the entire population of a town risks the town (and the unique abilities from it) going extinct and unavailable in subsequent generations. The player creates a new custom character, with a new name and gender, and starts again at the lake near Glen Town, repeating again to liberate the eight towns. King Alastair increasingly grows concerned and confused: the new “True heir” looks different from the previous one, even a different gender. Is this new one an imposter, or was the previous one? As Alastair grows older in each generation, he also realizes he never dies, due to an old curse of the kingdom where he cannot die without a proper bloodline heir to the throne (he never has children or takes a wife throughout the story). This repeats for up to eight generations: if the player still fails to take the castle by then, the game ends and they lose.

If the player ever succeeds in taking over the castle (killing Alastair), the game enters the “final generation” phase of the game. Here, they play as the mysterious stranger that offered the tutorial at the beginning of the game, normally found in a hut near the castle. The stranger is revealed to be the real “True heir,” having survived the assassination attempt when his parents died, living quietly among the different villages, his true identity kept secret from everyone. Using magic learned from the mages in Mountain Town, he resurrected fake human beings as doppelgangers, to challenge King Alastair and test if the villagers would support them. In this final act, the player can immediately challenge the castle with an army of fake humans, to take the castle away from his own summoned being from the previous generation, who did not realize that they were not human. If the player wins during this act, the “True heir” takes his rightful place on the throne, with a confused but satisfied population of subjects (if the previous player successfully completed the Royal Gemstone, a task not available in this final act, some townspeople may believe this “True heir” to really be an imposter). If the player loses during this act, the previous successful “player character” remains as King / Queen of Renatus, proving themselves to have the soul of a True King, widely accepted and supported by the kingdom.

Each “generation” can be completed with between 5 (1 + 4) and 12 (8 + 4) strategy maps, each taking 10 – 20 minutes to complete. Therefore, it might take between 1 and 4 hours of gameplay to complete one “generation” of gameplay, with between 2 and 9 total generations to play through to see the final ending. Therefore, the game is meant to have roughly between 2 and 35 hours-worth of gameplay, depending on the player’s skill and play-style.