Renaissance Kingdoms

For these moments when you want to play a game online but don’t have much time to dedicate to it everyday, here’s one of these little “management/roleplay” games that will only demand you a few minutes of your time: Renaissance Kingdoms (also available in French at Les Royaumes Renaissants). It’s free (unless you want to take a paying account, in which case the character will be a Noble), it’s played online in a simple web browser, and you don’t need to do more than your share if you don’t want to.

The basics are simple: your character starts as a peasant in the Renaissance setting. The first goal is to feed him/her (simple bread is the poor peasant’s friend when starting!), and to find ways of earning money, the most common being hiring yourself at a mine, as soldier in the local army, or by cultivating your little parcel of soil. More interaction with other players and within the game is of course possible: you can put offers to hire people to work for you, craft items and sell them later on when you reach a certain level, chat with other players in the various taverns where you can also buy food, and so on.

So, as said, not very complex, not very demanding, you can stop whenever you want, and it can be fun to give it five minutes here and there (if you plan on not playing for several days, park the character at a church: at least he’ll be fed and you won’t find him dead from starvation!). At least it has lasted me for more than one week already, which isn’t that bad at all for such a little thing.