Throne Wars, new MMO from makers of Royal Revolt, invades Windows Phone

Back in the early days of Windows Phone 7 gaming, online games were few and far between. One game – Haypi Kingdom – made a name for itself by offering an MMO experience in which players could build strongholds and war against each other. Haypi Kingdom was quite buggy though, and eventually the developer stopped supporting it.
Since then, Windows Phone 8 has come along and we can now play genuine MMORPGs like Order & Chaos Online (also lamentably unsupported by its publisher). But that old Haypi Kingdom-style design is still fun and addicting, it turns out. Flare Games (who also made Royal Revolt) have just released its second Windows Phone 8 game: Throne Wars. With beautiful artwork, an easy to learn interface, and lots of player-versus-player battles, Throne Wars might just become the casual MMO to beat.
Fortifying the settlement
Throne Wars is a massively multiplayer online game, so you’ll need an internet connection to play it. As the game begins, the player has just built a castle and founded a small kingdom. The game’s medieval world is filled with many such kingdoms, all fighting for resources and dominance over their neighbors. You’ll need to build defenses, gather resources, and form an army in order to stand a chance against opposing forces.
Each player only has a castle to start with. Quests will teach you the ropes and guide you through the construction of the settlement. First, you’ll need to build production facilities for the three chief construction resources: wood, stone, and metal. You’ll also need a storehouse to keep all of those resources.
Once the resources start rolling in, you’ll want to upgrade your castle and other buildings. Upgrading the castle allows you to research new technologies such as warfare, bureaucracy, and administration. Each of these unlocks new buildings and abilities. Several buildings and the settlement wall have their own technologies and improvements to research as well.
Time and In-App Purchases
Building, researching, and upgrading new things doesn’t just cost physical resources; it also takes time. Completion times start out short but get longer as you reach higher upgrade levels. These times don’t tend to be a big deal, because you’re usually waiting for resources to accumulate anyway. Impatient gamers can spend gems (premium currency) to speed up building times. But I don’t recommend it, as that’s always the worst use of hard currency in games.
The in-game shop sells a variety of boosts (such as temporary resource production or defense increases), as well as extra wood, stone, and metal. As far as I can tell, Throne Wars lacks an in-game auction house like Haypi Kingdom had. That is a drag, but we can expect new features from future updates.
Two things you’ll definitely want to buy with the gems you earn from leveling up and completing quests are the Ruler’s Chest and Special Chest bundles. Each one includes a great assortment of boosts, military units, and an extra worker for your settlement. An extra worker allows you to upgrade two things at once. These bundles can only be purchased once and they’re well worth the gem cost.
Join an alliance
Another goal you’ll get from quests is joining an alliance. And it just so happens that we have a WPCentral alliance on the Pangaea (INT) server. The alliance is full right now - thanks for joining, everybody.
Alliance membership carries several benefits such as access to Alliance chat. One criticism I have about the game’s chat interface right now is that chat is completely hidden during normal gameplay. You have to specifically enter chat in order to see messages. In the future, I’d love to see a dedicated area for chat messages (or something similar) on the main gameplay screen.
More to come
One major downside to Throne Wars at this point is the lack of cloud storage. Here is a free to play game that will likely entice many players to make In-App Purchases. But unless save files are stored on the cloud, we run the risk of losing those purchases when switching devices and/or reinstalling the game.
Player data is clearly stored online anyway, otherwise we couldn’t all see and attack each other’s settlements. The Settings page does mention that cloud storage is unavailable, which seems to hint that it will be added in the future. We’ll confirm with Flare Games by the time our review rolls around.
Flare Games has told us that Throne Wars will appear on Windows 8 and RT if the Windows Phone 8 version does well. Let’s hope that comes to pass, with both versions sharing save data on the cloud.
There’s much more to see and do in Throne Wars – I haven’t even touched on building an army and attacking other players yet! Stay tuned for our full review.
- Throne Wars – Windows Phone 8 – 41 MB – Free – Store Link
Thanks, Mohamed A., for the tip!
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Paul Acevedo is the Games Editor at Windows Central. A lifelong gamer, he has written about videogames for over 15 years and reviewed over 350 games for our site. Follow him on Twitter @PaulRAcevedo. Don’t hate. Appreciate!
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Игра очен,очень замечательная! Nata ololo
На последнем скриншоте убило наповал =D
Китайцы такие китайцы :) -
Its trying to communicate.
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Lol
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За its ебальничек бы разбить буржуям
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Возможно даже ногами.
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There are other languages than English and even other letters than Latin. Surprised?
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Yeah, but it is impolite to speak in a language that the other people around you will not understand when you also speak the same language as everyone else. At worst, we see a bunch of gibberish. At best (and with effort), we get this:
"The game is very, very great! Nata ololo
The last screen shot killed on the spot = D
The Chinese are Chinese" -
Sorry for making you confused. The idea is that there is a "review" on a screenshot written on Russian but is obviously a fake because only Chinese write them so. It makes sense in Russian, not English. Didn't knew commenting it first can cause such a drama. Bet if I would've posted that after waiting for some other comments to appear nobody paid attention except for those whom its addressed.
And is calling one who posted that "its" polite? -
He is using 'its' because it is a joke, something along the line of an alien trying to communicate...
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Well, russians are russians, they will write a post on a English speaking site and pretend they did that because there are other languages, still they are not respecting other languages.
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Again. That what I was trying to tell makes sense in Russian.
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I'm totally fine with it Sarge. I couldn't read it, so I just skipped it. It didn't kill me :) Ignore all the Xenophones.
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hello. my alliance leader gave me the lead and gone, and I have no authority on the fortress. Please correct this error
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Hey off topic, I'm looking for an AT&T user who can help me unlock my at&t's 920, because I'm not in the US and I don't have an AT&t account so I can't ask for the code, anyone please?? :/
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Forum please...
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I did really enjoy Royal Revolt, the game got quite difficult in later levels but it was a hell of a lot of fun and I did support the developer a couple of times for upgrades, I may check this one out as well, although it doesn't look like it's an action style title and more text based. I'll give it a shot anyway, free is free after all.
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Royal Revolt is available here in Brazil but this game isn't. :(
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Guilherme why don't you put your region forever in USA or UK like me? You guys cry so much... I don't know why. I am Brazilian and have no problem with this...
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Lets go, I will explain this again... I ask this not only for me but for a whole Brazilian community of users that don't know / don't want to how to change the region of their phones. And believe in me: these are the vast majority of the users base. I do this because I want that everyone can enjoy their phones without to have to do anything. I do this because I want that the users base in Brazil grows more and more and more. I won't stop...
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Lol, and here is a guy who wants to help his fellow Wp8 owners, and there is another asking them to as switch regions.
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Nice, thorough game review
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Don't forget Troll Wars. Great game on Windows and Windows Phone.
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Royal Revolt was good but this looks bad.
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Paul, please follow-up with VLC folks. Here is latest update on development status http://www.neowin.net/news/new-vlc-windows-8-screenshots-show-revamped-ui
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I've sent a mail ingame to join the alliance lol
Now, hurry up and accept :p -
Nope. I'm tired of games that make you wait and force you pay for "in app upgrades" just to get some enjoyment out of them.
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This also not for wp7.8...
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I liked Royal Revolt, but bugs in the game never got fixed.
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Where is danger dash?
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Flare Games doesn't make that game, so they have no control over it.
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Hey Paul, I've sent a request in game to join the WPC alliance. Please accept when you can :) Cheers!
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Can I join WPC too :)? I'm Namite!
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Needs cloud saving then will play it. But will download anyway.
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Out Of Topic.. GTA SAN ANDREAS Is Out Right Now
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Thanks guys. Article is coming up soon.
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Tr2 & ss will be available in 1 month
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Source? And I assume you mean on 512 MB devices since both games are already out...
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I saw screenshot of twitter where Joe has confirmed that it will be available in 1 month for 512 mb
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Off topic........GTA SAN andreas live in the store.........it says not available for 920,925 and 1020.......wtf!!
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That's good for me... Actually Russian, Spanish (Latin ) and English I know very well.
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Impressive! I'm semi-fluent in Spanish and know a little Japanese, but I don't know if I'll ever have thfree time to improve on those languages as I'd like.
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The games cloud storage sucks big time. People who will uninstall the game won't be able to get back their progress. I had an issue with the Android version and have raised a support query with flaregames. Lets see if they let me back in!
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Yeah, hopefully we can convince them to add the support to WP8 as well.