Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Of Crowns & Chains
BlueJayAvis · Published by BlueJayAvis
Content notice: Gameplay depicts a globe representation of the Earth populated by nations potentially disputing territory. Army units are shown as 2D icons that capture enemy tiles and engage in combat with enemy units. Combat is represented by 2D icons frozen together with animated shapes as battle intensity indicators. No blood, gore, realistic violence, or personal harm is shown (only icons disappearing and color-coded tiles changing ownership/occupation). Realistic war effects on demographics (e.g. casualties distributed across military-aged pops) are presented as statistics (population pyramid, numbers) that impact demographic change.
Mostly Positive — 70% positive (20 reviews)
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
A solo-developed grand-strategy sandbox where you lead a nation in a dynamic, historically-inspired world.
£4.59
Lowest price we've ever recorded
View on SteamPrices can lag the live Steam store — always confirm before buying.
Price history
Indie, Simulation, Strategy, Early Access · 2025 · More under £5 games
In Of Crowns & Chains, you shape your kingdom's fate through strategic decisions and dynamic events. Explore a historically inspired world where every choice matters.
About this game
Of Crowns & Chains is a solo-developed grand-strategy sandbox where every nation, army, and populace is dynamically simulated on a seamless spherical Earth. Lead a nation of your choice in January 1910 and influence the course of your nation as time marches onwards.
IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE SOLE DEVELOPER
Since the game is in early Alpha, you may encounter bugs, optimization issues, and limited content (lacks navy system; no save/load system or deeper economy system, etc).
This is an Early Access title, if you purchase this game, you will be getting access to the game in its current state.
If you're unsure, please wait until the game transitions from Early Access to Full Release since the base game will be considered finished by then.
CURRENT FEATURES
Sphere World & Accurate Landmass – No flat-map distortion. Landmasses are generated from real-world geospatial data; highly accurate coastlines and islands.
Resolution Modes – Procedurally generated tiles covers only Europe (including Ottoman Empire, excluding Russia east of the Urals). You can select a tile resolution mode upon starting a New Game (no restart required). Historical states and provinces are not implemented; only procedural tiles.
The Normal tile density mode has the default tile resolution:
The Quad resolution mode features a 4x increase in tile resolution, offering better visuals and more accurate borders (also 4x GPU VRAM usage):
Nation Selection – Choose any nation currently available, from the British Empire to the Ottoman Empire or the microstates of San Marino and Liechtenstein.
National Treasury & Debt System – Manage your nation's treasury by balancing hourly income from taxes and territory against the upkeep costs of your divisions.
Unit System – Each unit represents a division (≈20,000 soldiers), with many divisions fitting inside a single tile.
Combat System – Battles can last for days under certain conditions. There are three hidden phases of combat—Skirmish, Assault, and Breach (battle reports not implemented). Divisions get exhausted during combat and newly captured tiles must be consolidated.
Dynamic Population & Manpower – Populations grow, age, and decline over time. Casualties directly impact age distribution, while manpower pools adjust as soldiers retire or new recruits become eligible. Demographic change is simulated realistically in backend code (infant mortality, fertility rates, gender).
Wars, Ceasefires & Limited Alliances – Occupy tiles and declare wars. Cascading calls-to-arms can pull suzerains, vassals and allies into conflict; tiles can be occupied and liberated. Alliances cannot be negotiated (only historical alliances are active on game start).
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10, 64-bit or newer
- Processor: Intel Core i5-10400 2.90 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (Dedicated Graphics) or AMD Radeon RX 550
- Storage: 7 GB available space
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
Supported Languages
Latest news
Patch NotesOfficial
Price Update
Hey everyone,I've dropped the price to $4.99. This isn't necessarily a reflection of the upcoming remake's quality.I'm pricing this game at a point where trying it out is a low-stakes decision for people.The previous pricing (including the jump to $19.99) came from inexperience. This is my first published title as a solo developer, and I made some calls early on I'd do differently now.The Godot remake is still actively in development and looking promising!For updates:TikTok (@ofcrownsandchains) — major development milestonesDiscord — daily/weekly minor updates, if you want to follow along more closelyThanks to everyone who's stuck around.Read full article on Community Announcements (BlueJayAvis)Patch NotesOfficial
Remake Progress Update
There's some progress to show for the remake.It's been a while since the last announcement. The tiles are essentially done for the first region (England and Wales), though the remake isn't playable yet, so nothing has shipped to the live build. And, the foundations of the new shader and planet-rendering pipeline have also been set.An in-engine screenshot of the new globe (full atmosphere, cloud layer, and dynamic sun lighting) and the new nation-level shader, built from scratch in Godot.What's doneEngland & Wales, fully hand-drawn at county and major-city level. Every border is a real triangulated mesh now. The old Unity version was limited to an index-map/texture approach, which meant borders showed visible texel stepping (low resolution borders) at any reasonable zoom. That constraint is gone entirely.A screenshot from the developer tile-definer application. Not an in-engine or gameplay screenshot.Major Cities that were strategically or economically significant for the 1910 setting are split out as their own tiles/provinces, separate from the county they sit in. Visually, they can still appear "within" their county (e.g. revealed on click), but mechanically they're independent, meaning an invading force has to take the city province specifically to capture it. That's meant to add complexity to urban warfare instead of strategically important cities just being a stat on a procedurally-generated province tile or a larger county tile. Non-Major Cities not split out as their own tile/province can still show up as objects within the county or province they are located in.Major Cities defined within Wales and England (shown below) are: Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Merthyr Tydfil, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds, Bradford, Hull, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Barrow-in-Furness, Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, and London (subdivided into its boroughs, including but not limited to, Westminster and City of London).A scre...Read full article on Community Announcements (BlueJayAvis)AnnouncementsOfficial
Remake In-Progress
I'm remaking the game from scratch in the Godot engine and I'll resume updates from there. A new discord server has also been set up (linked in the Steam page).The latest version of Of Crowns & Chains (Unity - Alpha 1.0.4.05) will remain accessible to all players as a legacy branch. When the Godot remake becomes playable, it'll override the Unity version as the public default branch. The remake may look different since this will be using a new engine and different approaches/mechanics/scope/design. However, the game will remain fundamentally the same. It'll start on January 1st, 1910, you select a country, and play from there.As usual, the remake (and future updates) will be free for all current and future owners of the game.I'm currently working on an Earth mesh with height-based vertex displacement for actual mountains and terrain, so I think the remake will look better. Here's a work-in-progress screenshot of a low-resolution Earth mesh with displacement:This is about 500,000 vertices, but it's too low resolution, so I'll be aiming for something above 2 million vertices or perhaps 5-10 million.You can keep up with development of the remake (and future updates) on the official TikTok account.Read full article on Community Announcements (BlueJayAvis)Patch NotesOfficial
Alpha 1.0.4.05
Changes:Another Graphical Overhaul to make the game look better (not too different from Alpha 1.0.3 - 8 direction, 8 pixel ray marching maintained for performance reasons).Naval Unit Spawning & Movement Fixed (Naval combat in-development).I'm publishing this update despite the changes being minor since I believe the visuals introduced by Alpha 1.0.4 were less appealing than Alpha 1.0.3 (now fixed).I can reimplement options for ray marching (Alpha 1.0.3's fade-in effects), but generally, the performance costs of per-frame ray marching are so high that the vast majority of players would set the variables to 8-direction, 8-pixel anyways.Read full article on Community Announcements (BlueJayAvis)Patch NotesOfficial
Alpha 1.0.4.04
System Changes: Frontlines on allied territory against non-allied neighbors are now available for player/AI assignment. Allied nations will send units to help an allied nation (player or not) during wars.Adjacency check added to ensure nations do not steal occupation of tiles if they do not occupy a tile adjacent to the captured tile. Allies will claim occupation of tiles their units capture if they have at least one tile adjacent to it. Player units will follow the same logic to minimize exclaves.Combat simplified. Border clashes (when two units attack one another at the same time) have been removed since it's unnecessary. Combat is now attackers vs. defenders.Units now evenly distribute across frontlines. Previously, only one unit was sent to cover empty tiles and large stacks did not distribute themselves post-arrival to the front.Encircled AI divisions now more aggressively seek to free themselves.Frontline assignments now overwrite already-assigned units if they are selected and assigned to a new front.Attacking units can retreat at all times (no longer pinned at late stage of combat).Battles now last longer.Balance Changes: Austria's initial army was increased from 40,000 to 200,000. Hungary's initial army was increased from 30,000 to 150,000. (40,000 and 30,000 was apparently the size of their national forces at the time, Landwehr and Honvéd, not including their common army, so these numbers should be more realistic now).Bug Fixes:Battle indicators were not showing up, but now they are fixed.Units were going back and forth while fighting in battles (interpolation bug); now fixed.Read full article on Community Announcements (BlueJayAvis)
