Kingdom: Classic and Kingdom: New Lands Review

Kingdom: Classic and Kingdom: New Lands

Do you remember when you were a kid and your Mum would be cleaning up the house and you would spill something accidently and then she would start yelling and screaming about how she just cleaned up there and then start chasing you around the house with a wooden spoon, while you swiftly leap over obstacles and slide under tables all the while avoiding the lethal swipes of the smacking spoon.

Kingdom has finally made me understand her side of that scenario.

In Kingdom it's kinda like every night you are hosting a party, you get everything set up, at night time a bunch of people that you don't really know come over and trash your house. Then in the morning you clean up and get set up to have another party, and once every 5 days you have a massive blow-out party where Gatecrashers rock up and start using the lawn mower on your carpet and having sex with each-other in your parents bed room, throwing all your furniture out the windows, stealing everything you have, bashing everyone else at the party and keeping your neighbours up all night by setting off car alarms. Basically a normal weekend when I was in High School. But this time I’m the Parent, it's my house and I'm the one who has to clean up all the blood and vomit. AND LOOK AT MY FUCKING CARPET!!

Kingdom, however, is fun despite the increasing stress levels as the game progresses.

Developed by Noio and Published by Raw Fury, who are currently in the process of bringing us The Last Night, which looks to be amazing. The developers describe Kingdom as a 2D side-scrolling strategy/resource management hybrid with a minimalist feel wrapped in a beautiful, modern pixel-art aesthetic. Which hits the nail on the head.

Kingdom only uses two buttons and Left/Right arrows or dpad or stick. And that's all you need, you are a king or a queen riding a horse and you run to the left or right of the map collecting gold, and using that gold to recruit vagrants, chop down trees, plant farms and build defences.

In the daytime the land is beautiful and happy, with lovely friendly music playing as you explore the length of your piece of land, expanding it and building up defences and farms and what not.

The night time is a different story, each night monsters called The Greed come and try to ransack your Kingdom, killing and taking everything that they can and each night there are more and more. Every 5th night there is a blood-moon, which spawns more and harder enemies that don't leave in the morning like they do in the normal nights. These enemies have to be destroyed in order for you to continue to grow and build your Kingdom:. Eventually when you have explored more you discover that these monsters come from portals on either side of the map and they must be destroyed in order to stop them coming to fuck with your Kingdom.

When you have upgraded your keep to the final level you can recruit Knights, and with a small contingent of archers you can send them out into the wilds to destroy these portals, but once a portal has been destroyed it will trigger a blood-moon immediately so you have to make sure your defences are strong before you mount an attack.

Now in Kingdom: Classic in order to win the game you need to defeat 4 portals, 2 on each side of the map thus making your Kingdom safe. It took me 15 hours and about 10 play-throughs to achieve this goal, but each time I was defeated I learned a little more which eventually led to my victory.

Kingdom: New Lands has a few new features and one of those features is a Ship that you have to re-build. There are 5 lands in total to conquer and save in Kingdom: New Lands and each one has different conditions, for instance, in each of the 5 lands after a certain number of days Winter hits, and Winter never goes away, once Winter hits your crops will die and animals to hunt will disappear leaving you with little to no income, so essentially you want to rebuild your destroyed ship and sail away to a new land before the Winter comes.

There are some new features in Kingdom: New Lands, such as different mounts - one being a bear that can attack animals and monsters; Statues that can boost your farming and knight power; A dog that will follow you and warn of trouble; And hermits, that when brought back to your keep, can build different things like a Ballista or a Bakery.

I am just over 15 hours into Kingdom: New lands and I feel as though I have discovered maybe 40% of what these new lands have to offer, I have made it to the third land but not past it as it is much more difficult to gain wealth in this land and the Winter comes a lot faster than the previous land. Despite my many failures at saving the folk of the third land I am hooked and I will keep on trying until I reach the final land.

Although restarting a land is daunting, each time I have a little more knowledge and with a bit of luck from the RNG gods I get better and better at mounting defences and managing my resources.

I hope to one day sail to the final land and declare myself King or Queen of all the lands, but as I am only half way through I feel as though this may take some time.

There is a tonne of re playability in Kingdom: New Lands, as you progress, even if you lose your crown you can still unlock different upgrades that will help you in your next play through. Each time you start a new land it will be randomly generated so it's always a different experience and you need to build your Kingdom according to what resources you have available to you, making it a unique game every time.

The pixel art is great, with forests and farmlands the game looks beautiful, and the water reflection is fantastic, I’ve often found myself watching my reflection running across the lands instead of what's ahead of me, I absolutely love the water it's really impressive.

The music is also top quality, with nice relaxing tunes in the daytime and scary dark tracks played at night, not to mention on the blood-moon nights the music is heavy and foreboding giving you a real sense of danger.

I managed to get Kingdom: Classic for free on a Steam promotion but it is only $5 AUD at full-price and well worth it, I had a great time playing Kingdom: Classic and as soon as I was done I knew I wanted to purchase and get stuck straight into Kingdom: New Lands.

You can pick up Kingdom: New Lands for $15 AUD on steam and again it is a very well spent $15, I’m 15 hours in and I think it's safe to say that I’ll be spending at least another 15 hours trying to complete it and discovering all that New Lands has to offer. The developers recently released a Free DLC called Skull Island that unlocks a final land, I don't know what this land contains but I can't wait to find out.

So you have beautiful pixel-art, a wonderful Soundtrack, tower defence, rougue-lite re-playability, resource management and a myriad of new things to explore. With every play-through being a unique experience. Kingdom: Classic and Kingdom: New Lands is really the whole package and a wonderful example of old and new style Pixel-art games.

Kingdom: Classic gets a 9/10 from me, losing one point only due to how much more content is in Kingdom: New Lands.

Kingdom: New Lands gets a solid 10/10. I love it and I feel as though there is nothing that the developers could do to make it better.

I highly recommend both of these games and I hope you have as much fun playing them as I have.

Kingdom: Classic Steam Link - http://store.steampowered.com/app/368230/Kingdom_Classic/

Kingdom: New Lands Steam Link - http://store.steampowered.com/app/496300/Kingdom_New_Lands/

Official Link - http://www.Kingdomthegame.com/

Official Trailer Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCkhhwvKz2s