Strategy games sometimes get dinged for being too complicated. Kingdom strives to be minimal.
Kingdom is a sidescrolling strategy/management game that just launched on Steam, where itâs been in and out of the top ten best-sellers for the past day. Itâs not hard to see why: true to its regal nature, the gameâs got luxurious graphics and this feeling of almost elevated grace about it. Your horse does not gallop or canter; it strides. The world around you is lush and lively, and detailsâreflections in the river, puffs of exertion from your exhausted steedâabound.
Kingdomâs design is similar: minimal yet elegant. Thereâs not even much of a UI. Everythingâs contextual. Your goal? To build up a kingdom and survive nightly assaults from creatures who want to rob you blind, take you from prince (or princess) to pauper. Thing is, youâre completely defenseless. As a king or queen, all you can do is ride around on your horse and throw money at things. Your subjects, however, can handle themselves well enough, provided youâve put everything in its proper place for them.
You walk around and invest coins in subjects and structures, like so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA1RJTDwb38
Upon receiving coin(s), subjects will join you (and slowly trudge to your base, where theyâll pick up a tool and get to work) while structures will magically sprout scaffolding for either construction or upgrades. Builders will eventually take care of the rest, as long as youâve put money into churning out a few hammers for them to use. Defending your base works the same way; buy some bows or scythes, get some people to walk to your base, and everything else will take care of itself.
Thatâs basically it. Thatâs the entirety of how you play Kingdom. By and large, itâs downright slickâthe closest thing Iâve played to a pick-up-and-play strategy game.
Slowly but surely, you take your burgeoning domain from tent city to respectable center of commerce and not-being-brutally-slaughtered-by-devil-goblins-from-that-blood-portal-deep-in-the-woods. I built up firstâfocusing on archer towers and reinforced walls to keep monsters from overrunning my fresh slice of civilizationâand eventually grew brave enough to venture outward. Thatâs when things got really interesting. I found ancient statues and portals and encampments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA1RJTDwb38
Kingdomâs story mightâlike everything else about itâbe minimal, but there are strange forces afoot, old mysteries stirring where human eyes canât see. I want to explore more, to understand the bones lying just beneath my glorious empire.
Kingdom has, however, irked me in a few ways. For one, it almost explains too little. On my first playthrough, I even managed to miss a crucial moment where I was suppose to build a wall, and that sequence-broke the whole game. I then spent five in-game days totally unable to build anything at all, andâpredictablyâmonsters ate everybody.
Kingdom is also a pretty slow game. Sometimes that means itâs relaxingâa zen-like lake chill out simulatorâbut other times I canât help but wish that someone would kill something and get me more money, or that baddies would try to huff, puff, and blow down my door already, or that getting from place-to-place on my asthmatic horse didnât take so damn long.
Granted, when things do become action-packed, theyâre all the more impactful for it. Kingdomâs mixture of serene scene-setting and piercing blasts of action (wherein you are, again, helpless and have to anxiously hope that your base holds up) makes for a unique pace. Even when Iâm taking in a gorgeous sunrise, Iâm the teensiest bit anxious.
The pace did, however, become something of an issue after I died and had to start over a few times. Surviving the first ten nights or so became a cakewalkâa very slow cakewalk. The game fell into a predictable, sometimes monotonous pattern. I wasnât bored, per se; I just wanted to get back to feeling like I was making progress.
Oh, and subject AI thatâs sometimes dumb as rocks further exasperates that. Sure, theyâll pick up hammers or bows or scythes reliably enough, but after that itâs tough to corral your subjects into sustained usefulness. You canât directly order them around, after all. They just do their own thing according to their roles.
I sometimes found it difficult not to shout at my screen, to say things like, âPlease, archer person, try hunting on the other side of the base, where there are actually any animals at allâ or âOH MY GOD WHY ARE ALL OF YOU IN A PILE ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE SCREEN FIGHTING NOTHING WHILE A SINGLE ARCHER HOLDS OFF THE GODDAMN HORDES OF SATAN ON THE RIGHT AAAAAAAA [sounds of my entire kingdom falling].â Case in point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA1RJTDwb38
After a few hours of playtime, Iâm definitely enjoying Kingdom, but I canât help but be frustrated by it at the same time. In that sense, itâs much like, well, a coin. One side is elegantly designed, relaxing, and gleaming; the other is tarnished by design flaws, AI problems, and a lack of clarity. But then, thatâs leadership for you. You can throw all kinds of money at problems, but time wonât speed up or slow down for you, and people will never stop being people.
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