I missed out on the original Yes, Your Grace when it launched in 2020, but I devoured it on my phone in a single evening. My only issue with the kingdom management title? There wasn’t enough of it. Thankfully, the launch of its sequel, Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall is right around the corner, and a free Steam Next Fest demo is now available, full of morally ambiguous decisions to weigh heavily on your soul.
Snowfall picks up shortly following the events of Yes, Your Grace, with a short animatic to fill you in, if you didn’t get around to playing the original. Yes, Your Grace focused on the trials of the established patriarch of a royal household attempting to secure his legacy and keep his subjects satisfied. The major narrative threads in the original carry over to the sequel, and while you’re presented with the option to have a default storyline chosen for you, you can also fill in your choices from the original title.
The gameplay loop of Snowfall is similar to the original. Each week, citizens from your lands, foreign diplomats, and even your family members will line up to present you with their problems. Solving these issues without incident will typically require you to exert some type of resource, whether that’s money, effort, influence, or something else entirely.
Snowfall expands on the decision-making beyond a simple dialogue choice. Where many of the resources you had at your disposal in the original were more abstract, you now have the option to mix and match items or agents with specific qualities to handle the task at hand. This gives you more flexibility in how you tackle certain problems, but forces you to put more thought into how your resources are distributed.
Not every decision is life or death, but you’ll rarely have enough of anything to satisfy everyone, and Yes, Your Grace is quick to teach you that virtually every decision you make, no matter how small, will have repercussions at some point throughout the story.
In addition to the story that continues the narrative established in the original, Snowfall will have a survival mode. This feature isn’t currently planned to make it in time for launch, but is available to try in the demo. The survival mode forgoes the sweeping narrative threads and forces you to maintain the balance of your kingdom for as long as possible.
Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall doesn’t have a firm launch date but is currently slated to arrive sometime in Q1 2025 on Windows PC, macOS, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox. Until then, I’d highly recommend checking out the demo and playing the original if you haven’t already.
