Game of Thrones Ascent’s premise is simple: raise yourself from the dirt of Westeros to become noble through some careful decision making and time management skills. By aiding the king you are initially rewarded a small holding to of land. Then you must then decide how you will lead your house to greatness: commit yourself to the realm, your family, or some other allegiance.

Whatever your motivation, most of the decisions come with three possible options. Some of these are visible from the moment the question is presented, while others must be revealed by entering into dialogue options, adding some flavour to the decision-making process.

Choices are also accompanied by rewards and stat bonuses. Choosing to hire a man whose dealings are always honest can buff your truthfulness, while siding with a treasurer who is more concerned with profit than justice raises your cunning. The problem is, by showing how each choice affects your standing, you start to focus on the rewards rather story - shifting your attention to the underlying spreadsheet rather than the fiction.

As part of Ascents main story you undertake missions. Like all of the gameplay, this consists of selecting a hired sword and a tactic through the intuitive touch interface. Your chance of success is judged by your warrior's skill with the selected tactic.

If your have sided with a powerful warrior, then combat goals such as skirmish yield the best results, while the morally flexible among you should side with more underhand options. From there, you just have to wait for the cooldown timer to reach zero to see if your plan has worked.

As wel as progressing through the story, you also have to manage your keep by building and upgrading your grounds with various structures such as blacksmiths and markets. These add additional perks, and allow you to gather resources which can further expand your holdings, and complete special missions with online allegiances. Upgrades can be acquired by gathering resources and waiting for timers, or just paying with Gold purchased in-app. Its a common enough system, but with so much gated behind IAPs, Ascent quickly feels constrained.

Game of Thrones Ascent is a fair take on the time management genre, but it offers little in the way of thrill to non-fans. If you can't get enough of Westros, though, you'll probably find it a fair distraction during ad breaks.