"Reign of the Star Kings" was intriguing at first glance - a "Lineage Solo Role-Playing Game" (as it's described). Its execution, however, leaves much to be desired and it more closely resembles a narrative generator than a game, echoing the functionality of those Dungeons and Dragons NPC creator websites that can produce characters and backstories with the click of a button. As someone more than capable of crafting tales for sci-fi empires without the crutch of dice rolls and restrictive charts, I found this approach more limiting that satisfying.

To begin with, the game's introduction positions you not as a titular Star King, but as a mere historian documenting their history - a concept with significantly less appeal. The gameplay, which consists of rolling two D6s, consulting numerous random event charts and logging their (disappointingly shallow) impacts on your empire, never really feels engaging.

The player is invited to "Consider the Emperor's reaction to these events and how they may shape the empire they rule. The Emperor's reaction will depend upon their sobriquet, their spouse and close relatives, as well as what they know of their history", hinting at a level of depth that unfortunately doesn't exist. The absence of genuine decision making mechanics or any real narrative influence results in an extremely passive gaming experience, relegating the role of the player to that of a mere observer.

A particularly telling example is the game's handling of this resource discovery random event: "It is discovered we have more of a valuable resource than previously thought" the entry reads. You might expect such an event to impact the game's dynamics or the empire's fortunes, yet this revelation has no consequences whatsoever. It's indicative of a broader issue where even theoretically game-altering events fail to affect the narrative or gameplay in any way. Here's another example: "Two neighbouring powers go to war. Should we take sides or remain neutral? How does this benefit us?"

Oddly, most events are like this - they pose questions as if the player was the Emperor making the decisions, rather than a historian logging them. And again, you would think engaging in wars or managing diplomatic tensions would have introduced exiting narrative forks, but there's nothing of the sort here; the lack of mechanisms for exploring these choices renders them little more than rhetorical questions, to which my answer was always "Who cares? It doesn't matter what I think. My answer won't change anything in this game anyway." Where player agency and narrative depth should have been, all that exists is a gaping void. This oversight suggests that players are expected to fill in the narrative gaps themselves, undermining the purpose of playing the game in the first place and looping back to the problem of this being little more than an NPC backstory generator. Also, with a total of only 108 random events in the game proper, it wouldn't take long for even this to become repetitive.

Additionally, the game attempts to introduce complexity through an Emperor trait system ("weak", "unstable" and "dishonourable"), implying these attributes influence the empires destiny. Yes, even this system feels underdeveloped, with significant events and decisions not logically impacting these traits, further straining the player's immersion and investment in the story. A new Emperor, for example, being a "pathological liar" contributes towards his or her "unstable" stat, however, having an Emperor that has been "committed to an asylum" apparently doesn't have any negative consequences at all (!)

"Reign of the Star Kings" spoilt its otherwise interesting premise by failing to provide player-driven choices and a cohesive, engaging narrative framework. It's a shame, because it would have been easy to put limitations on what events could or could not occur by having other stats such as empire wealth or military power, for example, or by deciding the outcomes of wars against competing empires by comparing their stats to ours and rolling dice to determine the outcome - with the potential risk of instantly losing the game. A player might get some use out of this as a story or character generating tool, but as a role-playing game, it's very disappointing and failed to deliver the experience that I'd hoped for. I'd only paid $5 for it and I feel even that was too much.