If you’ve ever wanted to be a feudal lord reigning supreme over your kingdom and loyal subjects, Diplomacy is Not an Option is a solid choice of title to dive into.
Players will take on the role of a feudal lord and have to deal with a range of problems that kingly rulers have had to contend with in days long gone.
Diplomacy is Not an Option from Door 407 is currently in Steam Early Access, but the game already has such a good foundation that we can recommend picking it up right now. Most of the game’s major systems are already in place and it runs incredibly smoothly.
Starting off as a feudal lord who has just spent a tonne of gold on various things, your trusty tax collector reports back to your castle with some bad news. The peasants are revolting and no taxes have been collected. Fed up with your ways, there’s a rebellion coming and you have to quell it.
There’s no time for diplomacy here, as the game’s title suggests, and you’ll have to prepare your castle and its surroundings for war against hordes of enemies.
Players will be advised to play through the game’s rather extensive tutorial first. This will get you up to speed with the ins and outs of building up your kingdom.
You’ll be instructed how to gather resources, forage for food, house your population and most importantly recruit new army units. Your army of course being essential to survival since you’ll need them to fend off attacks.
Diplomacy is Not an Option thankfully includes a “Fast Forward” button which increases the game’s speed significantly.
This speeds up a lot of the mundane waiting around that tends to be associated with games in this genre. Need to gather resources faster? Simply increase the game’s speed until you have enough and then go back to doing what you were doing at the standard pace.
Building your empire up is rather simple and there’s a lot of options available in the game right now. Players will be able to build walls, towers, barracks, fishing huts, lumber mills, stone quarries and more. It’s all rather standard fare these days given how many games are around on Steam in this genre.
Where Diplomacy is Not an Option excels though lies with the fact that the game is extremely polished. The user interface is clean and understandable and doesn’t overload you with walls of text and information. Everything that you need to succeed is at your fingertips and this makes the game rather addictive.
In our time with the Early Access build, we sunk quite a few hours into building up a successful castle fortress. The game’s research tree is quite hefty and there’s a lot of perks to unlock too.
The game also features an Endless mode which grants you full access to the entire tech tree. This will keep you busy for ages as you build up your fortress and forces to prepare for incoming attack waves.
If you’re looking for a solid “city-builder” with tower defence elements and a colourful low-poly aesthetic, Diplomacy is Not an Option comes highly recommended. Since it’s still in development too, it’s bound to only get better from here on out.
