Princess Siege is the game we’re working on right now. It’s a light-fantasy roguelike deckbuilder where every battle is a siege. You don’t wander a dungeon fighting one monster at a time. You march on villages, forts and strongholds, and you take them apart with a deck of cards.
The pitch
You’re summoned to the kingdom of Ironhold by its princess and named her Champion. You have a power nobody else in the world has: control over the Deck. To everyone around you, it looks like you can summon armies out of thin air, raise buildings in a heartbeat and predict exactly when reinforcements will arrive. To you, it looks like drawing a good hand.
The Iron Princess sends you out to bring the neighbouring realms to heel, one princess at a time. She’s very convincing. Whether she’s telling you the whole truth is something you’ll have to work out over many, many runs.
From left to right: the Iron Princess, your patron; Aldric, her court mage, who is either a lovable old fool or much more than he lets on; and Sylvaine, princess of the elves and the first ruler standing in your way.
How a siege plays
Battles are a tug-of-war. You and the defending settlement each build up a board of units across three rows: melee, ranged and siege. At the end of every turn, both sides add up their total Power:
- If you’re stronger, the difference smashes into the town’s Siege bar.
- If they’re stronger, the difference grinds down your Army Morale.
Bring the Siege bar to zero and the settlement falls. Run out of Morale and your campaign is over.
The fun part is that the same Power that threatens the walls also keeps your army alive, so every card does double duty. Do you dig in with a Shield Wall to stop the bleeding, or roll out a trebuchet and gamble on breaking the gate before the elves break you?
There’s no mana. What you can do each turn is limited by your hand, so building a lean, focused deck matters more than anything. Humans bring knights, formations and siege engines. The elves of the Verdant Grove fight with archers, beasts and a forest that literally grows back.
The Verdant Grove
The first realm is the Verdant Grove, home of the elves. Each run generates a branching map of towns, forts, shops, camps, relic altars and events. You choose your path, picking up new cards and relics along the way, until you reach the Stronghold at the end.
That Stronghold is Sylvaine’s Heartwood: a fortress grown into an ancient tree, and the hardest siege in the realm.
Every run starts in the Chamber
When a run ends, win or lose, you wake up back in the Champion’s Chamber in Ironhold. The loop is part of the story, not just a menu. Only a couple of people in the castle seem to notice that time keeps resetting, and they each have their own reasons for not saying much about it.
Where it’s at
Princess Siege is in active development in Godot. A full run is already playable from start to finish:
- The Champion’s Chamber hub
- A continent of rival kingdoms
- A generated realm map with sieges, shops, camps, events and relic altars
- A Stronghold boss whose princess joins your side when you win
So far that’s 46 human cards, 46 elf cards, 26 relics and 30 events. One realm out of seven is playable today, and the next ones are the Tidal Wave mermaids, the Deepforge dwarves, the Ember Mountains dragonkin and more.
What’s next
We’ll be posting regular devlogs here as the game grows: new realms, new cards, the stories behind the princesses, and the occasional thing that broke in a spectacular way. If you’d like to follow along, check back here, or drop us a line at hello@teamhayat.com. We’d love to hear what you think.