Kingdom: New Lands (2016)

Kingdom was an interesting little strategy game with a unique atmosphere, simple controls (left, right, down) and a distinct style. It was also deeply flawed, with unresponsive builders and archers that will randomly select a side to hunt/defend.

Kingdom: New Lands is pretty much the same game, but worse. The enemy only has one main portal, but archers still pick a random side to fight on. Not only is it still deeply stupid that all your combat troops happily sit on one side of the map while your entire village gets murdered, the randomness is also quite frustrating.

Another change is the ship. You have to construct a ship, crew it and wait for it to sail to one end of the map before getting on. This is how you win now. And while this is an improvement, since it means tht once it's build the enemy has to go through all your defenses to defeat you, it also serves as a distraction that doesn't add much to the gameplay.

But, as i said before, the worst part is how none of the flaws are addressed. You still constantly have to hold left/right, you still have to wait for your horse, you still have to go through the incredibly tedious recruiting process, et cetera. Every map start out fun but halfway through you've established your village and are just gathering resources for the final push. And this gathering is dreadfully boring and tedious busywork. Oh, and the game still doesn't explain anything, of course.

This is such a lazy product, it's embarassing they're asking €15 for it.

Rating

• If you've played Kingdom 1: 2 stars
• If you haven't played Kingdom 1: 3 stars

I really wanted to like this game. It's something I seemed predisposed to enjoy. I love side-scrolling rogue-lites, and I tend to enjoy games that mix-in some tower defence elements even though I am historically awful at them. I love pixel graphics and a colourful, atmospheric world. Ultimately though this game is just not that interesting or rewarding to play, which I want to dive into in some detail.

I did not beat all the islands before coming to this conclusion. I played the first three multiple times, unlocking everything and figuring out how to build up a fort and economy and how to clear the maps before winter came. I tried my hand at Island 4, lost in a depressing way after a long play session (more on which later), and decided that I didn't care enough to start a new run.

This game presents an illusion of depth. Part of this I attribute to what I assume is an intentionally minimalist design. Your only way to interact with the environment is to ride around and allocate coins to things. It's not always clear what the things will do once you have allocated the requisite number of coins. There are more things to spend coins on than you have coins to spend, at least initially, and you need to keep some coins on your person because they are also your hit points. It seems like you have some important decisions, and you are being invited to experiment and die frequently. On each island there is a map you can buy which will unlock some new environmental feature, which you can then experiment with and die using. These are familiar idioms in the language of rogue-likes.

What you will find, however, is that there is generally not that much diversity in how you will optimally build up your fort. What diversity that does exist is generally dictated by the random environment, rather than on legitimate choices for the player. For example, there is no tech tree. You upgrade your fort in a straight line, the same on each play through. Similarly, there is no real option when it comes to creating income. Your archers will initially provide enough from hunting rabbits and dear, but eventually you need farms. You need to push your walls out to protect the farms. You need catapults and archers to protect the walls. Do this long enough and eventually you will have the money necessary to repair the ship and sail away from the current level.

The gameplay therefore subsists not in making interesting choices, but just figuring out how to build out the fort in a way that does not overextend the resources you have as each day dawns. But once you've figured out the build order, it is essentially the same for each map. Only small details change, depending on what shrines and mounts have spawned.

At bottom, this is my criticism of the game: There is only one strategy. The player is invited to use the randomly generated elements in service of that strategy but not to modify it.

I have other quibbles:

The interface and AI can be frustrating. It's possible to accidentally spend a coin to say, cut down a tree outside your base, but there is no way to rescind that order. If you do this just before night falls, workers will rush out of your base to complete the task, and you may lose many coins you've invested in them and their hammers.

Similarly, it is easy to mix up whether you are standing on a wall you want to upgrade or the blazon next to it which you pay to send a knight party out to destroy a portal. Sending out knights at the wrong time can be disastrous; instant death if you're not prepared for the resulting counterattack, or (worst case) a blood moon which may last for days, during which your farmers will let their crops die and many workers will lose their tools. You can theoretically recover from this, but you would probably rather just start a new run, or quit as I eventually did.

Unlocking permanent upgrades for your game is a rogue-like staple, but as you unlock new things in this game I felt it actually became more cumbersome to play, since there is little variation in the optimal strategy. It's fun to have a dog, for instance, which will tell you from which direction a wave is approaching, but it is in general preferable to have a Hermit who will give you a special tower, or shrines (particularly the shrines to improve your archers and farmers). Once you have upgraded your mount, nothing appears to prevent that same upgrade from appearing on the next island.

There are bugs. Sometimes the banker will not spew forth the interest I've earned, sometimes he'll give me everything in the vault if I so much as stop in the middle of town. Sometimes there will be no option to cut down a tree, but it will appear if I return the next day, having made no other changes. There appears to be a rule which dictates how many rivers (required for building farms) can spawn on an island, but none which controls whether or not these rivers spawn in places where they are unusable--like under a shrine or portal--or where using them would be inadvisable, like where you would need to clear out a vagrant camp and therefore deprive yourself of a source of nearby workers (in either event it becomes harder to build the economy).

It took me on average about 2 hours to clear an island. If you want to play one of the later islands, you will probably need to bring a boat full of knights and archers and a hermit to help you get established, which means spending another 2 hours to clear an easier island and accumulate those resources. I would not necessarily mind this, except that there is little motivation to play a harder island when I know there will be no meaningful variation from the easier version I just played.

I might pick this up again for casual play, during a medium length layover in an airport, for instance, but will not be returning to it seriously.

Played on the Switch.