Reigns APK (FULL GAME)

Reigns turns a medieval kingdom into a deck of cards you sort with a left or right swipe. First-time monarchs who keep dying before year five get the balance rules that actually extend a reign here. Balance beats greed in this kingdom, because a full treasury kills you just as fast as an empty one.

How to Play Reigns and Rule a Medieval Kingdom

Reigns asks you to swipe every card left or right, refusing or accepting a request from someone inside your kingdom. Each swipe moves four gauges for the church, the people, the army and the treasury, and emptying or filling any single gauge ends your reign on the spot.

Nerial built the whole thing around that one gesture, and Devolver Digital put it on Google Play in August 2016. However, the simplicity hides real teeth. Roughly 38 characters cycle through the card deck, each pushing their own agenda.

The medieval monarch you control is not the star of the story. Your bloodline is. Because a curse keeps dragging your family back to the throne, this Reigns walkthrough treats every death as a checkpoint rather than a loss. Around 1.5 million players have downloaded the game, and its 4.49 star average across roughly 140,000 ratings tells you the loop lands.

What the Left and Right Swipe Actually Does

Every card carries a portrait, a line of dialogue and two silent options. Swipe left and you refuse. Swipe right and you accept. Simple so far.

The clever part sits in the drag itself. As you pull a card partway, the four gauges at the top flicker to preview the damage before you release. For example, a small nudge left might show the coin icon dipping while the cross icon glows. That preview is the only warning system the game gives you, and most new players release the card before they ever read it.

The Devil’s Curse and the Medieval Setting

The Devil laid a curse on your family line, which is why the crown never truly leaves your household. Death sends the story forward instead of ending it, and a new monarch inherits the same running timeline.

Subplots stretch across centuries rather than single reigns. Witch burnings, scientific enlightenment and grubby court politics all thread through the card deck. Some chains take three or four monarchs to resolve, so a storyline you start in the 1100s may pay off long after the king who began it is dust. That century-scale continuity is the part almost nobody warns you about.

How Reigns Compares to Other Android Swipe Card Games

Lapse: A Forgotten Future is the closest free Android alternative, and it swaps the medieval court for a modern nation balancing the environment, society, the army and the economy. The framework is nearly identical, though the writing is drier and the tone is bleaker.

Thrones: Reigns of Humans takes a different route with three factions instead of four, splitting influence between humans, elves and dwarves. Fewer meters means fewer failure states, so it forgives sloppy play more readily. By contrast, the four-gauge structure here punishes you from both directions at once. Neither free option carries the same volume of hand-written card text, which is where the paid title earns its price.

Android Version vs the PC and Switch Releases

Touch input was the original design, so the Android build feels like the intended version. Swiping a card with your thumb reads as a real decision in a way a mouse click never quite does. The phone version also suits short sessions, since a full reign runs roughly five to ten minutes.

Nintendo Switch owners get the game bundled in the Reigns: Kings & Queens collection, released in September 2018, which pairs it with the sequel. The desktop release costs more than the $2.99 Play Store price and swaps swipes for controller sticks or keyboard keys. Some Android users do report text getting clipped on narrower phone screens, which the larger-screen versions avoid. Therefore the trade is portability and price against readability.

Church, People, Army and Treasury: The Four Gauges

Four gauges sit across the top of the screen, marked with a cross for the church, a human figure for the people, a sword for the army and a coin for the treasury. Each one runs from empty to full, and your job is keeping all four away from both extremes.

Most walkthroughs stop at “keep them balanced,” which skips the detail that actually matters. A gauge that fills completely ends your reign exactly as fast as one that empties. Overstuff the church and the clergy seize power. Pile up too much money and you die in a rather undignified accident.

Advisors will push you toward extremes constantly, because each one only cares about their own meter. So the four factions are less a resource system and more a tightrope with four ropes.

Why a Full Gauge Kills as Fast as an Empty One

The empty-gauge death is intuitive. Starve the people and they storm the castle. Bankrupt the treasury and the crown collapses. New players see those coming.

The overfill death is the one that blindsides almost everyone. Reach a maxed coin gauge and the game rolls a random ending from a small pool, including a drowning-in-ale death and an archery mishap. Nothing on screen shouts a warning first. In my runs this accounted for more early endings than every empty gauge combined, which is why refusing free money is a genuine survival skill.

Reading Gauge Movement Before You Commit

Hold the card halfway and hold it there. The gauge icons will pulse to show which meters move, though the game never tells you by how much. Small pulses mean small shifts.

Two icons pulsing at once signals a trade rather than a gift. For example, a cardinal offering gold usually costs you standing with the people. Read both halves before releasing, then pick the direction that pulls your weakest meter upward. That single habit is the difference between a five-year reign and a fifty-year one.

Holding All Four Meters Inside the Safe Band

Aim to keep every gauge sitting around the middle third of its bar. From there, no single card can spike you into a death state, and you always have room to absorb a bad event.

Trouble starts when two meters drift high together. At that point your options narrow, because most cards that lower one will lift the other. Consequently the smart move is correcting early, while the correction still costs you nothing. Waiting until a gauge nearly caps means accepting a request you would normally refuse, and the kingdom rarely offers a clean exit at that stage.

How Dynasty Succession and the Year Counter Work

Death does not end a session, because the crown passes to an heir who inherits the same running timeline. Your monarch dies, a successor takes the throne, and the year counter keeps climbing from wherever it stopped.

That continuity is the system most articles skip entirely. Consequences you set in motion under one king land on his grandson. A trade deal signed in year forty can detonate in year ninety, and the dynasty carries the bill.

Achievements measure the same axis. Google Play lists 13 achievements for Reigns, and several of them are pure endurance rewards. Elder asks for more than 50 years on the throne, while Mummy demands more than 100.

What Your Heir Inherits From the Last Monarch

Gauge positions reset when a new monarch takes over, which gives you a clean slate on the meters. Story state does not reset. Any card chain you opened stays open, and characters remember what happened.

This creates a genuinely useful tactic. If your current king is doomed anyway, spend his last swipes pushing a long storyline forward rather than trying to survive two more years. The heir picks up that thread with full gauges and fresh room to work. Skilled players deliberately sacrifice a reign to set up the next one.

How the Year Counter Builds Toward Elder and Mummy

Each card you resolve advances time, and most swipes move the calendar forward by a fraction of a year. Long reigns therefore come from card volume, not from clever single decisions.

Old age becomes its own threat past the fifty-year mark. The Witch can inflict ailments that shorten what remains, though surviving ten years under those ailments unlocks a treasure choice of her own. Pushing past 100 years for the Mummy achievement means threading gauge management and old-age events at the same time. Few players reach it on a first attempt.

Memento Mori and Why Dying Is a Collectible

Memento Mori is the game’s death register, and it logs every distinct way a monarch can perish. Dogs, dragons, ale, arsenic and a badly judged duel all get their own entry.

Completionists chase this list on purpose, which flips the usual logic of a strategy game. One entry needs you to reach the Dark Rock without Excalibur in hand. Another needs a peace treaty with the Foreign Princess followed by a specific escape swipe. Since the register only fills through experimentation, a run that ends badly still adds something permanent to your save.

How to Unlock Royal Deeds and New Card Sets

Royal Deeds are named objectives that unlock new characters and new card sets once you complete them. Each reign shows you a shortlist of Deeds to attempt, ranging from surviving five years to winning a duel to getting lost in the dungeon.

Here is the connection competing articles miss. Completing Deeds does not just tick a box, it physically enlarges the card deck you draw from. François Alliot stated the game held 770 cards at one point, and later content additions pushed it higher still.

More cards means more storylines, more advisors and more ways to die. So a player who ignores Royal Deeds is playing a smaller version of the game than someone who chases them. Rex the dog, the Jester and the Witch all arrive through this route.

What Royal Deeds Ask You to Do

Some Deeds are almost automatic. Governing at least five years happens on any competent run. Winning a single duel takes one lucky exchange.

Others demand deliberate setup. Losing yourself in the dungeon usually means following Rex when he wanders off, or escaping into the passages instead of dying when a gauge spikes. One Deed involves eating a coloured mushroom the Jester points you toward, which sits in the forest and requires you to refuse the dog’s first two directions. These are not things you stumble into. You aim at them.

How Finished Deeds Grow the Card Deck

New card sets shuffle into the deck the moment a Deed resolves, and they mix with the existing pool rather than replacing it. Your next reign therefore draws from a wider spread of possibilities.

This is why the “All the cards” achievement behaves so strangely. Players report it firing anywhere between roughly 844 and 855 cards rather than at one fixed number, because duel dialogue lines and rare encounters each count separately. Chasing it means completing Deeds, fighting every opponent who offers a duel, and dying in ways you have not died before. Grinding a single long reign does the opposite of helping.

Characters Worth Chasing: Rex, the Witch and the Jester

Rex the dog is the most quietly useful figure in the card deck. He leads you to the forest, drags you into the dungeon and occasionally drops the Frozen Blood ruby in your lap. Follow him whenever he appears.

The Witch trades in curses and gifts, and her offers usually cost something you will regret later. However, one of her choices hands you a permanent advantage if you pick the ruby over the crown. The Jester gives advice that sounds like nonsense and turns out to be an objective hint. Roughly 38 characters exist across the roster, and meeting all of them is its own achievement.

Skeleton Duels, the Dungeon and Hidden Items

A skeleton challenges your monarch to a sword duel that plays out as a card exchange rather than a swipe decision. Attack and parry alternate, and each choice either lands a hit or leaves you open.

Duels are the game’s only real minigame, and they hide a large slice of the card total. Every individual strike line counts as a separate card, which is why duel-heavy players fill their collection faster than cautious ones.

Beyond the duels sit the dungeon and a small set of permanent items. Excalibur, the Frozen Blood ruby and a handful of status effects change what your monarch can survive. None of them can be bought, since the game carries no in-app purchases at all.

How the Skeleton Duel Actually Resolves

The skeleton telegraphs its next move through the card art and dialogue, though the tell is subtle. Attacking constantly works surprisingly often, and plenty of experienced players swear by it as a default.

Winning five duels in a row unlocks the Duelist achievement, which is one of the rarer entries on the Google Play list. Losing a duel is also a Memento Mori entry, so a defeat still feeds your collection. For example, players hunting the death register will sometimes throw a duel on purpose once the achievement is already banked.

The Barbarian and Prince Fights

The Barbarian is the hardest opponent to even meet, let alone fight. He appears after a specific viking storyline resolves, and executing every viking when you triumph over them is one route to provoking him.

Your own son can also challenge you, which produces one of the bleakest cards in the game. Both fights use the same attack and parry structure as the skeleton duel, but their dialogue lines are entirely separate cards. Players chasing a complete collection often report the Barbarian fight alone adding around ten new cards in a single encounter. That is why so many collections stall just short of the achievement.

Excalibur, Frozen Blood and Other Status Effects

Excalibur is the sword that lets your monarch survive encounters that would otherwise be fatal, and the dragon at Dark Rock is the clearest example. Attempt that fight without it and the death card writes itself.

Frozen Blood arrives either from the Witch’s treasure choice or from Rex, and it applies a lasting status effect rather than a one-off bonus. Items persist through a reign but do not automatically transfer to your heir, so timing matters. Grab a powerful item early in a monarch’s life and you get decades of use. Grab it in year ninety-eight and you barely notice it.

How to Break the Devil’s Curse and Reach All Endings

The Devil placed the curse that drags your bloodline back to the throne every time a monarch dies. Breaking it is the only genuine win condition, and everything else in the game is preparation.

Three endings exist, tracked by hidden achievements labelled The End n°1, The End n°2 and The End n°3. Each represents a different outcome when the Devil finally returns to collect. Two of them go badly for your soul.

Getting the good outcome requires specific groundwork completed before that final meeting. Most players hit an ending accidentally on their first attempt, then spend the rest of their time working out what they should have done. The Millenium achievement, which asks you to reach the year 2000, unlocks alongside two of the three.

How the Curse Frames Every Single Reign

Reincarnation is not a game-over screen dressed up nicely, it is the actual premise. The Devil returns periodically to check on his work, and those visits punctuate the dynasty timeline.

Every reign therefore serves double duty. You are surviving in the short term while assembling the pieces for one specific confrontation centuries away. This is the strongest reason to treat doomed monarchs as setup rather than failure. A king who dies in year six having advanced the curse storyline did more for your save than one who ruled quietly for forty years and touched nothing.

What the Three Endings Ask For

The first ending traps your monarch permanently, and it is what happens when you meet the Devil unprepared. Nothing you did before that point saves you.

Getting the better outcomes means completing optional tasks before the confrontation arrives. The most quoted route involves aiming the curse at something already dead rather than a living character, which leaves the Devil with nothing to claim. Players who reach that ending report needing several full dynasties of preparation first. Consequently the endings function as a long-form puzzle laid over a short-form card game.

Why the Year 2000 Marks the Real Finish Line

Reaching the year 2000 unlocks the Millenium achievement and signals that your dynasty has run its full arc. The medieval opening gives way to gunpowder, science and eventually something recognisably contemporary.

Getting there is not about one heroic reign. It is about stacking dozens of ordinary ones without breaking the chain badly enough to reset your momentum. Around 17 percent of tracked Google Play players have banked this achievement, which puts it well ahead of the rarest entries but far behind the easy ones. That figure is a decent honesty check on how deep the game actually runs.

Common Mistakes That End a Reign Before Year Ten

Most monarchs die from a full gauge, not an empty one. New players optimise for wealth and safety, then get killed by exactly the thing they were hoarding.

Three errors account for the overwhelming share of short reigns. First, treating money as a score. Second, dropping storylines partway through. Third, swiping without reading once the cards start repeating.

None of these mistakes feel like mistakes while you are making them. Each one feels efficient. That is precisely why they survive so long in a new player’s habits, and why naming them shortens the road to a fifty-year reign considerably.

Hoarding Treasury Money Until the Coin Gauge Overflows

Accepting every tax proposal feels responsible. The coin gauge climbs, your options widen, and nothing obviously bad happens for a while.

Then the meter caps and the game kills you with a random luxury death. Reaching maximum money puts you in a small pool of endings that includes drowning in ale and a fatal archery incident, none of which you can react to. Refusing gold when the treasury is already high is the correct play, even though it feels like leaving value on the table. Spend surplus on anything the church or the people want instead.

Abandoning Century-Long Storylines Halfway Through

Long chains open quietly and close loudly. A scholar asks for funding, a witch trial begins, or a foreign court sends an envoy, and each thread expects follow-up across several reigns.

Dropping a thread does not just lose you a reward. It can leave a hostile card in circulation that keeps draining a gauge every time it surfaces. Similarly, unfinished storylines block the Royal Deeds attached to them, which starves your card deck of new material. Follow through, even when the immediate cost looks unappealing.

Swiping On Autopilot Through Repeat Advisor Cards

Familiar cards are the trap. After twenty reigns you recognise the cardinal’s usual demand and swipe before finishing the sentence. Muscle memory takes over.

The game quietly rewrites those cards as storylines progress, so a request you have answered fifty times may carry different consequences now. Advisors also change allegiance across the dynasty timeline. Reading the gauge preview costs you two seconds and catches every one of these switches. Skipping it is how a promising eighty-year reign ends on a card you thought you knew.

Best Reigns Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Beginners survive longer once they stop treating each card as a moral choice and start treating it as a nudge toward the middle. The kingdom does not reward good kings. It rewards balanced ones.

These three habits produce the fastest improvement for anyone still dying in single-digit years. Each targets a different failure point in the four faction system.

None of them require knowing the card deck by heart. They work on your very first monarch, and they keep working at year ninety.

Alternate Your Swipes to Steady the Four Gauges

Alternating left and right across consecutive cards is a crude method that genuinely works. Because most cards push opposing meters, alternating naturally cancels out extremes. Players have reached the fifty-year Elder threshold doing almost nothing else.

Treat it as a fallback rather than a strategy, though. Once you can read the gauge preview reliably, targeted swipes beat blind alternation by a wide margin. The alternating rhythm is best used when two meters are already dangerous and you need to buy a few years of breathing room.

Spend Doomed Reigns Farming Royal Deeds

The moment a gauge is past saving, stop trying to survive. Your monarch is finished, and fighting it wastes swipes that could unlock something permanent.

Pivot instead to whichever Royal Deed is closest to completion. Follow Rex into the dungeon. Accept the duel you would normally refuse. Because Deed completion adds new card sets to the deck for every future reign, a deliberate death that finishes an objective is worth more than three cautious years of nothing happening.

Refuse the Crusade Until the Army Gauge Recovers

Crusade cards are the single most common cause of sudden collapse, and the general will offer them at the worst possible moments. Accepting drains the people gauge continuously for years afterward, not just once.

Only agree when the people meter sits comfortably high and the army meter needs lifting. Otherwise refuse and absorb the general’s irritation, which costs far less than a population that bleeds out over a decade. Skilled players time a single crusade per monarch at most, and some avoid them entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions About Reigns

Is Reigns free to play on Android?

No. Reigns is a premium purchase at $2.99 on Google Play, with no advertisements and no in-app purchases attached. The download runs about 98 MB and needs Android 8.0 or higher. One payment covers unlimited replays across every monarch and every ending, permanently.

How long does it take to finish the game?

Reaching a first ending takes most players several hours spread over many short sessions. Players who worked through the Switch collection version report roughly 13 hours for a fuller completion. A single reign lasts about five to ten minutes, so the game suits commutes and queues rather than long sittings.

Does the game add new content after the ending?

Yes, though not through seasonal updates. Completing objectives shuffles fresh card sets into the deck, so later playthroughs draw material a first-time player never saw. The title still sits near the top of the card category on Google Play years after release, largely because that unlock loop keeps runs feeling different.

Who Should Put On the Crown in Reigns

Anyone who wants a strategy game that fits in the gaps of a day should buy this one. It rewards players who enjoy dark humour, hidden storylines and systems that punish greed. Fans of long campaign builders will find it too slight, and anyone expecting narrative control over their monarch will be frustrated by the randomness. I spent my first dozen reigns furious at how quickly a full treasury killed me, and the moment that clicked, the game turned into one of the smartest things on my phone. Buy it, expect to die badly, and let the dynasty do the work.