RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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What is it? A visual novel, RPG, management game with time travel. Release date August 6, 2026 Expect to pay $17/£12.74 Developer Wild Wit Games Publisher Curve Games Reviewed on RTX 4090, Intel i9-13900k, 32GB RAM Steam Deck Verified Link Steam
Sovereign Tower is so much more than it seems—which feels rather appropriate for a game where you play an itinerant leper who accidentally becomes the ruler of a magical kingdom, the titular Sovereign. Nobody is quite sure what to make of you, especially if, like me, you start suggesting eating cats or recruit a literal wolf to join your Knights of the Roundtable.
At first glance this is a cosy visual novel management game with a soft colour palette and handsome art. You sit on your throne listening to requests, demands and grievances, and then you send out your growing gaggle of knights on quests in an attempt to keep everyone happy.
But Sovereign Tower quickly reveals itself to be a complicated juggling act where nearly everyone needs your help, and those who don't probably want to kill you. There are fires everywhere, and you'll never have enough knights to put them all out.
It takes some of the fundamentals of the excellent Reigns series, but stretches them out, filling the space with more elaborate storylines, surprisingly meaty roleplaying systems and, most importantly, time travel .
Time to kill
(Image credit: Wild Wit Games)
Time is the dreadful spectre looming over Sovereign Tower. Most quests can be completed whenever you want, or simply ignored, but each act features main quests and random emergency quests that must be tackled within an allotted timeframe. Sometimes these are also tied to the satisfaction level of the various classes of your citizenry—scholars, merchants, nobles and the people—or the wealth contained in your treasury.
So you'll need to send out your knights in time, and keep your people happy and your economy strong. That's easier said than done.
If you want to get more nobles on your side, you might have to piss off the merchants. If you want a full treasury, how are you going to pay for your knights' armour to be repaired, or equip them with expensive magical equipment and fast horses? And if you're too cheap, how are your knights going to succeed in their quests?
Quests also challenge specific abilities—strength, agility, charisma, luck, magic and wit. You're not going to want to send a scrawny magical knight on a quest that involves lifting heavy objects. And your brawniest warrior might have a tricky time taking down a rogue necromancer.
(Image credit: Wild Wits Games)
Each adventure also contains certain keywords that relate to the attributes and preferences of your knights. Angelica, the first knight you'll recruit, loves animals. So if the quest involves killing a bunch of critters, she might not be your first choice. On the other hand, she might be the perfect choice, with her attribute allowing her to pacify the animals without bloodshed. Quests can have unexpected outcomes, which means that it's worth sometimes going with your gut and taking a risky punt.
It's worth sometimes going with your gut and taking a risky punt.
Preferences work differently. One of Angelica's preferences is diplomacy, so if you send her to end a dispute between some druids and a mob of angry peasants, this will make her happy. She loves mediation (yes, she's a dork). Keep their satisfaction high and your knights will be loyal even as you make the worst possible decisions. Let it drop, however, and you might notice some empty spaces around the Roundtable.
There's one more wrinkle: you don't automatically get a full list of everyone's attributes and preferences. As the Sovereign you might have a lot of power, but that doesn't mean you immediately know everything about your employees. You'll need to hang out with them, then—spend a bit of time getting to know them. Or you can just get one of your advisors to spy on them.
Sovereign Tower manages to make what could have been disparate management, roleplaying and relationship systems feel incredibly cohesive—and crucially, fun to explore and exploit. Key to this is the fact that all your knights have a degree of agency that elevates them above mere pawns. They can surprise you on quests, or even come to you with alternative solutions to difficult problems.
(Image credit: Wild Wit Games)
It's exclusively thanks to one of my knights that we defeated an intimidating rival. He suggested we kidnap the guy's son to put him off his game. He's also the reason I got the option to assassinate a rebel leader instead of negotiating with her. And, off the record, that horse race I won? Where all the other competitors mysteriously died? Yeah, he might have had something to do with it.
OK, so your people dig you, you've got an enviable roster of talented knights, you're fabulously wealthy, that must be all you need to worry about, right? Sorry, no. Life is unfair.
Those time-sensitive quests I mentioned before will sometimes just appear out of the blue. A village is about to be destroyed by a flood! Send your knights to help in one turn! But, oh dear, all the knights who could save the day are already busy on a three-day adventure. I guess the village is going to become a water park.
Give me more time
(Image credit: Wild Wits Games)
It can often feel like you're only ever a few turns away from a daunting crisis. The murder of a knight, a betrayal, a kidnapping, a civil war—sometimes you'll be able to resolve them, sometimes you won't. Luckily, a lot of crises allow you to just carry on even if you don't find a solution. But you might not be happy with the results. And that's where time travel comes in.
Locked in a crypt in the bowels of your tower sits a magical artefact possessed by a powerful demon. Specifically, it has the power to turn back the clock—whenever you want. If, you know, you're cool with working with a demon who is maybe a little bit too enthusiast...
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