This week, a simple game about growing and expanding a small kingdom. Coated with gorgeous pixel-art, this simple game has more depth to it than you realise. It’s both an adventure in discovering mechanics, and an enjoyable roguelite challenge.
1
When you first start playing Kingdom: New Lands, you are approached by a ghost. The ghost of the last king (or queen). “Come”, he says, and you follow him. He teaches you the basic controls of the game: Left and Right to walk, down to drop a coin and recruit a beggar, hold down to construct a building or purchase an item. Then you are left to your own devices.
So you wander back and forth, recruiting people, building defenses, not really understanding what is going on. You explore the land – the left leads to a dock, the right leads past a destroyed ship to a portal of some kind. You know you are supposed to be doing something, but you aren’t really sure what.
Day falls to night, and the sun rises again. You keep going, not understanding your goals. Coins start running out, but you notice some of your men give you coins. You don’t really understand why. Then by chance you notice it: monsters from the portal attacking your buildings, archers defending against them.
If you’re like me you will eventually be overwhelmed. The enemy chipping away at your towers, not making enough coins to rebuild them all. They will catch up to you and pull the crown from your head. You can no longer rule. The land is lost.
2
By keeping you in the dark, Kingdom: New Lands forces you not only to explore the land around you, but also the behaviour of everything around you. Once you start to understand how archers behave and how farms work, you will have an understanding of how to create an economy.
You will study the monsters and their attacks and learn how to defend against them. At some point you will realise they are after gold, and that carrying gold can be a defense. It not only acts as currency, but also a health bar for your ruler.
At this point you will be well versed in all you need to build up a strategy. You may still lose a few rulers, but eventually you will find the boat and build it. Your people will escape and you will find yourself in a new area where you can do it all over again.
Or you will lose your crown again. Fade to black. Start over.
3
Starting a new land feels like you are starting over again. You start off with extra gold and citizens from your previous land, so you have a bit of a bonus. But then you explore and you learn there are more portals. Buildings you haven’t seen before. This will be more of the same. But it will be different.
You’ll slowly learn what the new buildings do. You’ll have to defend both sides of your kingdom. You’ll learn that travelling from one end of the map to the other takes time. And you’ll need to learn to time your upgrades. Managing your civilisation becomes complex, and the new maps provide even greater challenge than before.
If you like strategy then this is a game for you. It’s a roguelite, tower defense, civilisation building game. And if you don’t like strategy, then you will still be able to marvel at some of the best pixel art I’ve ever seen.
With day/night changes, as well as weather ranging from sun, to rain, to descending mists, blood moons, red skies. There is so much detail put into the artwork, changing details as you build and as time moves on. The details add up, and creates a unique look each time you play the game.
