Game of Thrones: Conquest ™

Review by eFreeware

Most strategy games hand you a castle and let you decide what it means. Game of Thrones: Conquest hands you a castle in Westeros, a dragon egg, and a war between houses that never quite ends. It is the official strategy builder for the Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon television worlds, published by Warner Bros. International Enterprises, and it has been running since October 2017.

That longevity matters if you are thinking about installing it. The game has over 10 million installs and a 4.3 average from more than 326,000 ratings, which tells you two things at once: plenty of people have tried it, and a good number have stayed long enough to bother rating it. If you like the idea of running a house, training troops, and arguing with allies about where to strike next, this is built for you. If you want a short, self-contained campaign you can finish in a weekend, it is built for something else entirely.

Westeros as a persistent war map

The premise is straightforward. You lead a house in a Westeros that is permanently at war, with great houses clashing, dragons in the sky, and the army of the dead pressing on the realm. That last detail is more than decoration: the game includes a northern front where your troops and dragon head beyond the Wall.

The world is built around the show's landmarks. Winterfell, King's Landing, Dragonstone and Castle Black all appear as Seats of Power, which are the prizes in the game's kingdom-versus-kingdom wars. Taking one is not a solo achievement; these are group efforts where allies coordinate, execute a plan and try to beat an entire opposing kingdom.

What appeals to me about this setup is that the fiction and the mechanics point the same direction. The shows are about houses that cannot survive alone, and the game's central activity is exactly that: finding allies, keeping them, and using them. The developer pitches it as an immersive strategy building game, and the structure it describes does seem to match that pitch rather than just borrowing the name.

Building a castle, then an army

A typical session starts small. You train troops and knights, strengthen your castle's defenses, and start raising an army. Research happens at the Maester's Tower, where you work through technologies that affect both battle and your economy, and the Forge lets you craft weapons, armor and trinkets that form the foundation of your growing empire.

Heroes sit on top of that foundation. Over 100 heroes appear, taken from both series, among them Jon Snow, Rhaenyra Targaryen and dragons like Syrax. You level them up to improve your kingdom's battle and building stats, then deploy them into fights to reinforce your armies. The choice of which hero to bring, and where, is part of the loop.

The dragon is the other pillar. You build a dragon pit and receive a rare egg, hatch it, then name, customize and train the creature. Feeding and caring for it is part of the routine, and the payoff is a war asset that the game treats as the cornerstone of your kingdom. I would expect this to be the hook for anyone who watched the shows mainly for the dragons.

Alliances and the reason to keep logging in

Alliances are where the game's social layer lives. Knights and bannermen can be recruited, and alliances built, then called on in battle. Bending the knee fits the setting: sometimes the smart move is to submit to a stronger house rather than fight it.

The recurring events give that structure something to aim at. Kingdom-versus-kingdom tournaments pit whole alliances against each other over the Seats of Power, and the northern content runs as time-limited instances called The Great Ranging and Titans of the North, where coordination and strength are tested against monsters and the loot is the reward. Those two strands, competitive and cooperative, run through the game.

The update history supports the idea that the world keeps moving. A recent patch added the Dragonseeds storyline with new heroes, Alys Rivers and Hugh Hammer, along with Dragonseed gear and an Ever-Ready Warrior Saddle for your dragon. For a game released in 2017, that is a reasonable sign of ongoing updates.

What it costs and what you get for free

The game is free to download and carries a Teen rating. It contains no ads. It does offer in-app purchases.

What any particular purchase buys, or how central spending is to progress, is not clear, and I would not guess. The game is free with in-app purchases. If you are the sort of player who wants a hard ceiling on what a game can cost, that is a question to settle before you commit time to a house and an alliance.

Where the commitment lands

The clearest thing about this game is how much of it is other people. Seats of Power change hands in kingdom-wide wars, alliances have to be recruited and maintained, and the northern instances run on limited windows. None of that fits a player who dips in occasionally.

It is also a game with a lot of moving parts to learn at once: castle defenses, troop training, research at the Maester's Tower, crafting at the Forge, hero leveling, dragon care, and the diplomacy of alliances. The developer describes it as a strategy building game for people who enjoy kingdom building, powerful allegiances and raising dragons, and that is a fair description of the audience. It is a game with a lot to learn.

The flip side is that the parts reinforce each other. Research feeds your economy, your economy feeds your army, your army and your dragon win the fights, and the fights win you standing with your allies. For someone who wants a long project with a social dimension, that loop is the appeal rather than a drawback.

A long war worth joining?

Game of Thrones: Conquest is a free, ad-free strategy builder with in-app purchases, and it is aimed at players who want a persistent Westeros to fight over rather than a story to finish. The combination of hero collection, castle building, dragon raising and alliance warfare is coherent, and the setting does real work in making those systems feel connected.

It suits someone who enjoys the slower rhythms of the genre: planning research, choosing which hero to level next, and coordinating with a group over weeks rather than evenings. The 4.3 average and the install numbers suggest a large audience, and the recent Dragonseed content shows the game is still being updated.

If you are drawn in by the dragons and the houses and you accept that the interesting parts of the game happen with other people, this is an easy one to try. If you want something you can play alone on your own schedule, the alliance-driven wars at the center of it may not be what you are after.

What's new in version 26.9.830115

Awaken the Dragonseeds and command the forgotten bloodlines of Valyria! +New Heroes: Alys Rivers, The Witch Queen of Harrenhal and Hugh Hammer, Ascendant Dragonrider +New Gear: Dragonseed +New Dragon Gear: Ever-Ready Warrior Saddle Read more at gotconquest.com/news