Noble Kings,
Today we want to address the recent balancing changes to King Leo the Wise and share some insight into our thinking, alongside a few additional adjustments.
(If you're here just for the patch notes, feel free to scroll down. But we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to read this message.)
A Kingdom Off to a Glorious Start
It’s been just a few weeks since The King is Watching launched, and we’re overwhelmed with the response. Many of you have already poured countless hours into the game, conquered high Threat Levels, and shared your wild, creative builds with us. Your enthusiasm has been nothing short of inspiring, and it makes us even more determined to keep building upon this world: more content, more Kings, more units.
But before expanding the kingdom, we need to strengthen its foundations.
Improving the Foundation
Over the past weeks, we’ve mobilized everyone—seriously, everyone. We’ve spoken with nearly every GameMaker developer we could find, and we’re now in direct contact with the engine’s creators. Together, we’ve made huge strides in identifying technical issues, from crashes to performance. Some bugs still remain, but we’re confident that the new mid-run saving system is a massive step forward for the stability and playability of the game.
That said, there are two big areas left to improve:
⚖️ Fixing critical balance issues
🛠️ Clarifying UI and core mechanics
We started with balance…and that leads us to Leo.
The Problem with Leo
We’ll be honest: we didn’t balance King Leo the Wise properly. He was simply too strong. Here's why:
His first ability had an extremely short cooldown, enabling frequent blueprint sales.
Selling blueprints rapidly boosted morale, which in turn greatly increased unit damage and resource production.
Players could bypass early-game resource management entirely, a system that’s supposed to be a core part of the challenge.
On top of that, Leo has one of the best Gaze upgrades and can spawn free units on cooldown.
We want each King to offer unique bonuses and a meaningful challenge. Some will naturally be stronger than others. And we love seeing you break the game with wild builds, whether intentional or not. But Leo was on an entirely different level. Not just compared to existing Kings, but even those we’re planning to introduce in the future.
"Why Not Just Buff Everyone Else?"
Trust us, we considered it. But buffing everything to match Leo would cause runaway stat inflation and break the balance of the game in other areas. It would also make it far harder to design future content. So a nerf was necessary.
We hate nerfing things. And our goal was to do it just once. But after reviewing your feedback, we agree: we went too far. This update includes a revised, more balanced version of Leo and several other changes to improve the experience overall.
Patch Notes
King Leo the Wise’s third ability resource costs have been reverted:
1st use: Wheat 200, Wood 200 → Wheat 100, Wood 100
2nd use: Wheat 400, Wood 400 → Wheat 200, Wood 200
3rd use: Flour 250, Metal 250 → Flour 100, Metal 100
4th use: Flour 600, Metal 600 → Flour 300, Metal 300
First ability cooldown reduced from 40s → 30s.
Improved the functionality of artifacts applying productivity seals for Threat Level 8+ runs.
Added Steam achievements for completing the game on Threat Level 10 with each King.
Made various localization and text improvements across multiple languages.
A Final Word
We want to sincerely thank you for your feedback. Some of it was tough to read, but it showed just how passionate this community already is about The King is Watching. We share that passion with you, and we’re learning every day how to better shape this game together.
You’ve helped us learn a valuable lesson: don’t nerf that hard. We hope future updates will bring only joy, chaos, and crown-worthy moments.
Thank you for your love and support!
~ Hypnohead