Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 11:02 pm
Reigns – Card Game Review
Reigns is a Card/Adventure game from Devolver Digital, Inc., first launched in 12th August 2016.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 7,611+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Reigns Stand Out
Sit on the throne as a benevolent (or malevolent) medieval monarch of the modern age and swipe your royal fingers either left or right to impose your will upon the kingdom. Survive the seemingly never-ending gauntlet of requests from your advisors, peasants, allies, and enemies while maintaining balance between the influential factions of your kingdom. But beware; each decision you make might have implications and unfortunate consequences down the road that could put your reign and family’s dynasty at risk!
Each year of your reign brings another important – seemingly random – request from your unpredictable kingdom as you strive for balance between the church, the people, the army, and the treasury. Prudent decisions and careful planning make for a long reign but unforeseen motivations, surprise events, and poor luck can take down even the most entrenched monarch. Extend your reign as long as possible, forge alliances, make enemies, and find new ways to die as your dynasty marches along through the ages. Some events will span on centuries, with an intrigue involving burning witches, scientific enlightenment, wicked politics and, maybe, the Devil himself.
*iPhone 5 / iPod Touch 6 / iPad Mini / iPad Air or later recommended.
This Card game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Reigns is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 28th August 2019
Recent improvements include:
Corrects a bug with the homunculus
Download & Availability
Reigns is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This game is an absolute masterpiece. The punishments for incorrectly making your decisions are so creative. And the way they incorporate subtle hints and clues at relations between other characters like the executioner and Mat is simply so one of the best. It deserves its award and hopefully it will continue to be on of the greatest online card games ever.
A great fun title with a medieval backdrop where you play as a king and are give choices on how to govern. The way these choices are presented are given to you by a card where you either swipe left or right with choices on either side. You have 4 different meters that represent you kingdom and will need to keep them balanced based on your choices. Give more power to the Church but less to the military and you might a religious overthrow or maybe you run out of gold from spending too much on upkeep and your royal court exile youthe choices are endless and the results are brutal but see how long you can rule and if you die then you move on to a new king and maybe you govern different. This game is a great amount of fun and very to easy to pick up. Def worth checking out if you are a fan of card games with a more casual approach but still engaging nonetheless <3.
So many different stories and scenarios with different achievements.
The game is addicting and well worth the money but we do wish that when a king uses the name of an ancestor, they ad II, III, IV, etc or just add more names. Also wish there were more interactive events like fencing but other than those 2 things this game is great.
Reigns is a great game. And its well worth the 3 dollars. The only issue is that the duels are a little hard to understand but other than that, we want to thank the devs for such a great game.
Its a great game with lots of ending including a hidden one, we will not spoil it but if yuo want to really win you will need your wits and even if your not the witty type its a lot of fun.
Please make one for a Prince and a Princess.
A very simple but well-made game with endless replayability.
A fun time waster through the day, gameplay is challenging but not overbearing. We love the fact that the purpose of the game is to make everyone happy, but not giving to much power to one party, as it puts you in the mentality of what a real dictator / king would be thinking.
We have had this game for a while and it is one of the best games ever.
Good good it is very fun and we love it it is also a little silly actually really silly would recommend.
We love this game this is the best thing ever.
This is best game ever! We saw one person rate it one star, and thats just stupid! This game is our dreams come true, and if some people want to be jerks about it, they cant ruin our fun.
Honestly, we find this game to be a lot more engaging than Lapse. Ive only just started, but the cards are a lot more fun overall, and the game is visually more refined and a total pleasure to look at (and Lapse already was refined and pretty). That being said, although theres little reason to access the settings menu, doing so locks the game in landscape mode for us, even with rotation lock enabled/disabled. Theres a line in the settings menu that says Portrait Mode. It says so even when the game is locked in Landscape mode. The text doesnt seem to be something you can interact with, and the game doesnt return to portrait even once you exit the settings menu. That aside, the games great so far! Worth the $3 for the bundle with this game and its sequel :).
A neat game worth playing that is we fortunately held back significantly by curious design choices and somewhat poor goal communication. Ive been playing this game for years and it still often doesnt make sense the way certain decisions effect your stats. Oh well.
The vase card (green one) takes up more space on the screen than it should and covers the dialogue. This is rather annoying, otherwise the game is great. Clean graphics and engaging plot.
We LOVE this game but it doesnt fit the screen on our iPhone X. We cant see the full screen so it makes it very hard to play. Please fix this.
This game is enjoyable if you know what youre getting into (read professional online reviews about it first). Personally, we think it works best if you play in short spurts here and there, when you have a few minutes, see how far you can go, and dont take it too seriously. Maybe youll get far, maybe you wont, but its fun either way. Certainly better than a plain solitaire card game, which can also be repetitive but is fun in short spurts. Im glad we purchased this game.
This game is amazing the only thing is it can get a little… Hectic but other then that this game is amazing and we would recommend it and shut up haters stop saying its too complicated or this game is dumb because thats just a ton of bs (bull ****) this game has amazing story line but the one thing is the ending is a little unoriginal like its an obvious ending death cant take something thats already dead like make it a little better and can you make a animated part like make a new ending then a cut scene for it like yeah it might ruin a little bit of the originality but itll be cool like breaking tradition and doing something dumb but thats all and this game is amazing and you really have to think about unlike Other her games (Minecraft) so this game is awesome and Id recommend it.
This is quite fun at first, but after less than an hour of gameplay we found ourselves cycling through the same choices over and over and over again. Theres not a lot of strategy involved, as the way impacts are decided (and the severity/strength of those impacts) is almost completely opaque. We want to like this game a lot more than we do.
Ok so this is pretty scary we hate the x eyes even though we dont have this game we like your characters and the style is pretty cool.
The game tricks you into having fun with its lore. The actual gameplay is purely based on memorization of the choices on the cards. Success is purely based on rng. There is a victory condition that requires a moon logic puzzle. So it is NOT a strategy game advertised. You were lied to. Much like how in game the game lies to you regarding the effects of decisions. DO NOT BUY.
Honestly this game should be free.
The game is very interesting we just hate it that instead of knowing how your choices effect the game u literally have to take a chance and hope for the best, its not a good game design we hope that changes.
The choices dont make sense. There is barely a storyline. Playing at random without reading the choices plays the same as if you tried to think it out.
This game is not something that is really even thats interesting. All you do is try to figure out a balance of all the attributes but here is no plot/actual strategy to it. We were expecting this to be more complex than it is. Not worth the money.
There is no way to "win," you just flip cards. Got boring in a hurry.
Wildly tone deaf with regards to slavery, colonization, and other racially charged topics that require handling with care when depicted in media, especially video games that put the player in the position of the perpetrator. We found it distasteful and uncomfortable.
Game makes no sense & is awful. The interface is so minimalistic that it makes it so you cant tell how your choices are going to impact things, and the combat and dungeon sections are incomprehensible. Cant believe we wasted money on this.
We really love this game, but there is a glitch with the vase cards. Instead of being the normal size, they cover the entire screen, and we cant see anything else. Please fix this so we can keep playing your awesome game.
This is a game for masochists. You have very little control (two options) and no information about the consequences of your actions. We can see the devs sniggering behind our backs as they torment us. Maybe thats what some people are into? Not for us.
It is impossible to figure out the results of any action or recover from any decision. The questions posed are too vague and decisions you are asked to make dont come with enough Information to assess pro and con. Played a few hours and deleted in disgust. There is nothing clever here.
If it werent for some mild humor every once in a while… Nah forget it. One star. Decisions are pointless. The main drive of this game is to be funny, but it is goofy and pointless at best. Oh and frustrating to try to make any sense of how to accomplish anything. Might as well be swiping blind.
The text cuts off when in vertical mode, have to turn the phone horizontally to actually read the text.
This is honestly the best game we have ever downloaded on any device besides papers please. Reigns has a fantastic art style with a good theme. The only complaint with the game is the add ons you get in the bottom right sometimes dont work ESPECIALLY the cathedral that thing is legit broke it says it keeps the people from becoming too powerful and the church from becoming too week. It really doesnt though other then that though it is an amazing game highly recommended.
We dont want to spoil too much about the game in case you know nothing, but its great. Just…better to enter it with a mindset where youre prepared to laugh at yourself/your failures. If you can do that, we think youll love it.
Ive been playing for a while and we absolutely love it! The only problem we have is with saving our progress. The game only saves after the king has died. Please add a way to save your progress mid-reign.
Love this game so much! Its great for someone whos into old European history!! Honestly l just wished that as time moved on, real life events would happen in the game (Industrial Revolution, Introduction of Modern Technology, etc.). We really enjoy trying to achieve all the titles and meet every character in the game. Thanks for making it.
This game is fun and we want to come back. Enough said…..(not yet) Heres a suggestion: have important historical events or references during the game. Ex: its 1945, someone could say, The war is finally over sir! Or maybe you could have an option to send troops over to a real life conflict-It would be cool when you catch them and even take part of. Course you would have to make up your own after the current year but nonetheless it would be fantabular. Yes. Fantabular. Thanks for reading our review.
Amazing game that we love to come back to time and time again.
Would love to play additional content. Been dying for it.
We love this game its so addictive and fun! Ive lasted 42 years so far and am hoping to get even farther! The only thing we would consider changing is make it so that you know how much of each items you have currently, other than that it is a fantastic game.
Ive loved this game ever since we first bought it. The concept is awesome and it really makes you think. Id recommend it to anyone whos looking for a game.
We love this game, literal hours into this game already and Ive only had for two days. Only issue is Ive discovered the frozen blood three or four times yet it doesnt leave our goals. Otherwise the games amazing.
Really a great game, its a unique idea and its implemented very well. Casual, but clever. A little addictive, just one more card, at least in the first run through. Thats the basis of one complaint, though. The first run is one of discovery, the second is a little more strategic because you know the effect of your decisions for most of the cards. But it would be better if there was a little more variety in which cards are available based on your decisions. There is some of that, cards get added if you choose to meet certain characters, but ideally this would happen a lot more often so theres still more to discover in later playthroughs. We havent won yet and Im not sure how many more playthroughs Im going to bother with to get there because it is becoming a little too repetitive. Our other complaint is that progress is only saved when a new king begins his reign. Leaving the game for more than a few minutes means starting back at the beginning of that Kongs reign, which can be annoying (although we suppose it can be useful, like going back to a save). Id like to see the option to save progress mid-reign.
We love this game… Its as simple as that. However we dont feel as if its a 99 cent game when it has the qualities of a free game. Its really fun however and we definitely recommend it.
First of all we just redownloaded loaded the game and we completed the game for the good ending killing the devil but one thing just saying it was over 100 years and our FRIEND never came not once so we got one of the bad endings…. So just when that comes make it guaranteed we guess.
If you keep all 4 bars in the middle sometimes Cedric Brandon will throw a huge party that you cant decide not to attend. The party always ends with the king getting drunk and drowning or eating too much and choking. Sort of annoying when everything is going well and then the game kills you for it.
This game is great, but the app gets old after a week of play. We loved this game, but we wish that there was more detailed endings. Also, is there even a way to beat the devil.
Overall a fun game. We have reached the "end" in Reigns and find it a bit frustrating that if you mess up once you basically have no chance of getting at the good ending, since after you meet the devil for the last time you are set onto 3 paths only if you set yourself onto them beforehand which takes up a lot of time). So what we're trying to say is, it takes too much time and luck to set yourself up to the good ending (ending not death). Mess up once and you have to restart the whole game from year 1998-2000 something all the way to the 600's, where you have to work your way up and make strategically randomized choices in the dungeon. We think after you beat the game once you should be able to travel back to the 1800's or the 1900's with no special boosts or any cool quests unlocked.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.14
- Size: 153.06 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence, Infrequent/Mild Simulated Gambling, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Devolver Digital, Inc.
Last updated: 28th August 2019 | Genre: Card, Adventure | Developer: Devolver Digital, Inc.