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Pocket Gamer speaks: With Reigns: Game of Thrones on the way, what other games would we like to see getting the Reigns treatment?

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Pocket Gamer speaks: With Reigns: Game of Thrones on the way, what other games would we like to see getting the Reigns treatment?

The reigns of questions here

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Click here to read our in-depth Reigns: Game of Thrones review

Every week here at Pocket Gamer we like to ask our writers a question. This week's question is something along the lines of - With Reigns: Game of Thrones coming out this week, what other franchises do you think should get turned into a Reigns game?

The answers, as you might imagine, are pretty varied. We've got sci-fi, inevitable wizards, and baking. We've got things you've never heard of and things we have, and we've put it all into list form for your reading pleasure.

Want to find out what last week's question was? Click here and you'll be able to give it a gander. And please, if you've got your own suggestions for things you'd like to see becoming slightly more complicated versions of Tinder, then make sure you let us know in the comments.

Right then, on with the words and the puns.

Click Here To View The List »

1
Emily Sowden - House words: Hear me news!

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I feel like I'd be letting myself down if I didn't say Harry Potter. Rather than watching Harry make all the decisions, why not give you the chance to make a few yourself? Whether you're playing a totally new story or living through established wizarding events, it'd be pretty cool to give Voldermort a creepy, awkward hug back.

What happens if you befriend Draco Malfoy and show him the error of his ways? What happens if you don't mouth off to Snape in first year and instead engage in a student/teacher relationship based on trust and understanding? What if you ignore Voldermort's twisted visions and don't go to the Ministry of Magic? Man, there's a world of possibilities.

Plus, you'd get to be a wizard so everyone's winning.

2
Ric Cowley - House words: Editing is coming

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Give me Cowboy Bebop any day of the week. That gorgeous art style, wonderful sci-fi/Western universe, and endless possibilities to be a total screw-up just like Spike and crew always were. Instead of living multiple lives, you're just going from bounty to bounty until everything inevitably falls apart. It basically writes itself.

Maybe you're the newest member of the crew, and the four parties you're trying to appease are Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed? Or you switch between the different characters at the end of each bounty, so you get a different deck of choices to play with? Or maybe the whole game is from the perspective of wonder dog Ein and it's super stupid and weird.

I know it'll never happen, but I'm drooling over the possibilities. Hey, Nerial, hit me up, yeah? Let's bounce some ideas around.

3
Dave Bradley - House words: Family, duty, SEO

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I was tempted to say Star Trek, because captaining a ship is a bit like being ruler of a nation, right? Imagine the cool decisions you'd take about strange new worlds you encounter, all the while balancing crew morale and dilithium crystals.

Potential for satire, too. Then I realised it's been done, albeit without the big-name licence: Final Frontier exists.

So, let's try again. How about (drum roll) Taskmaster? Yes, the game show on Dave. Bear with me. You'd play the Taskmaster, and you'd dish out foolish challenges to contestants, make rulings on their performance, and deal with conflicts.

Little Alex Horne would pop up from time to time and you'd get to indulge him or send him away with a flea in his ear. You'd have to balance the finances of the show against metrics like viewer enjoyment and contestant rage. Don't tell me you wouldn't play that.

4
Dave Aubrey - House words: We do not clothe

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Since Nintendo is embracing mobile gaming and licensing their beloved franchises, I can't help but want a Reigns: Super Mario. Imagine Peach dealing with the tasks set by her legion of Toads, before becoming either too beloved and killed, and too hated and killed.

I mean, sure, Nintendo might not want to have Princess Toadstool killed in a game, but eh, she takes a beating in Super Smash Bros. as it is.

Ah, I can see it now. Toadsworth sharing the concerns of the general populace, expressing that there is too much, or perhaps too little, fungus to keep the people happy. Could it be that half of the population got turned into bricks again, or that Mario has been overzealous and jumping on the heads of the people?

And once you've made your way through the game, you'll come up against Bowser, who will kidnap the plucky Princess, and proceed to coerce her into marrying him, all while you talk your way out of the arrangement, since Mario will inevitably be stuck in a pipe somewhere.

5
Jon Mundy - House words: Our lists are sharp

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That's an awfully deep rabbit hole right there, so I'm going to swerve away and just go with my current favourite show on TV (well, streaming): Lodge 49. It's weird, warm-hearted, funny, and it has the best soundtrack ever.

Turning this strange little show, which is centred on a struggling fraternal lodge (think the Masons), into an exciting Reigns game might be a little tricky. When you really get down to it, nothing much actually happens in each episode.

But guiding committed slacker and new squire Dud through his day - working odd jobs, drinking at the Lodge bar, pestering Ernie, and decoding the cosmic messages everyday life seems to be conferring on him - would send this fan into nirvana.

To counteract the inevitably dire sales, I would propose the simultaneous release of Reigns: The Great British Bake Off edition. Is it Eccles cake week, or is it cream horn week? You decide!

6
James Gilmour - House words: Growing hench

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Sure, Game of Thrones is a pretty decent fit for the Reigns franchise. I mean, the throne is already there and everything. But there's a TV series which suits the Reigns formula better still: Doctor Who.

The eponymous Doctor might not wear a crown (can you knight someone with a sonic screwdriver?), but it doesn't matter. The Doctor is the arbiter of right and wrong in the universe. They're space royalty incarnate, simultaneously the King and Queen of Time Itself.

Constantly faced with pleas for help from warring alien factions, The Doctor is always being dragged into no-win scenarios. And every time, even when it means abandoning a beloved companion in an alternate universe, or standing by and watching Pompeii burn, The Doctor makes the tough calls to balance the cosmic scales.

Also - and this is the best bit - instead of being deposed as king or queen and starting the game as a new, random monarch, The Doctor can just regenerate and carry on in a brand new form. Fantastic!

7
Cameron Bald - House words: The old, the true, the intern

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How about we take the gang from It's Always Sunny and give them a shot at ruling a kingdom.

Everyone in the show is both thoroughly detestable and more than a tad stupid, so it'd perhaps be akin to setting an army of incompetent Littlefingers against each other, with none of them having the slightest potential in a world of political espionage.

As in the show, there’s no real comeuppance for being awful - instead, your punishment is simply continuing to inhabit the shoes of such a terrible group of people.

The constantly shifting hierarchy of characters would also be a nice fit, and more Danny Devito in our videogames is just the cherry on the rum ham.

8
Harry Slater - House words: Ours is the byline

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How about we wrap things up in a neat little bow by thinking about last week's question. How good would a Walking Dead version of Reigns be? You're the leader of a group of survivors, and it's up to you to guide them through the zombie apocalypse.

It's not just the undead you need to look out for though. Food is scarce, disease will be rife, and if the show's anything to go by being involved in a flesh-eating end of the world really brings out the worst in people.

How will you cope with the death of survivors? What if they come back to eat your face and brains? What happens if the water supply gets poisoned by a cult? These are all important questions you'll have to deal with.

There are some really interesting ways the game could deal with the source material, and twists that it could put on the Reigns formula to really get you into the meat of trying not to become meat.

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Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.