Kingdom - A Gem of Minimalist Game Design

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GWJ Let's Play
Three Moves Ahead Discussion of the Game

You start out knowing nothing. You, a lone ruler astride a horse with a sack full of coin, stroll into a new land filled with trees, animals, and tent-dwelling wild men. The bare interface leads you to a campfire, gives you some simple instructions on how to spend your coins, and promptly leaves you on the spot. Left with nothing better to do, you watch your hunter shoot a few rabbits as the sun slowly sets east. Night comes, and that unease you've been feeling all day turns to horror as a goblin rushes into your camp.

Certis's playthrough sold me the game within the first five minutes. From then on, it's a series of trials and errors as I slowly learned the game's mechanics and adjusted my approach. My recommendation: If the presentation grabs you within the first few minutes, stop watching and get the game.

Looks very stylish! I'd like to know just a bit more without getting spoiled, so Ill ask here. Roughly how long might this hold my attention? Is it a short but fascinating experience, or something with some depth to it?

Good question! For reference, I burnt over ten hours so far. Though your mileage may vary, the $10 price tag is worth it if you even spend half the time I did. Also fair warning: This is a roguelike, so fail states can and will happen.

Around 15-20 hours Id guess, if you play like me. Others could probably complete it in 10.

SOLD

Edit: Thanks for posting this. I am enjoying it well past bedtime

The latest Three Moves Ahead podcast has almost sold me on this. Rob Zacny seemed overall pretty negative about his experience, but the other two guest were so enthusiastic about it that they probably tipped that balance.

Sold!

kergguz wrote:

The latest Three Moves Ahead podcast has almost sold me on this. Rob Zacny seemed overall pretty negative about his experience, but the other two guest were so enthusiastic about it that they probably tipped that balance.

I actually share much of Zacny's frustrations about the game. And like him, I still poured hours into the game despite my frustration. Here are two thoughts about that. One, other aspects of the game are so pleasant, and the mechanics so alluring, that I could overlook that frustration. Two, the frustration is likely intentional, as I later found out that there are in fact well hidden mechanics to help you address the source of this frustration. That was actually a cool moment. Just when you think you've figured everything out, the game dishes out a few tidbits that can still surprise you.

I'm going to add a link of that discussion to the top. Podcast is very spoilery though, so listen at your own risk.

Certis did a short "let's play" of Kingdom, it's what solidified my purchase.

It's been taking up all of my small amount of gaming time, around 4 hours. I've made it to night 15 once but since then I keep dying at night 5.

It's a ton of fun. Made it to 15 on the first game, and I'm on X right now, but in much better shape. Catapults *really* help sort out the rushing mobs...

Still enjoying this. I got to day 21 and died, my first death. It's definitely tough to decide how to spend what little money you get. It's also frustrating to watch your walls get chipped away while your archers miss over and over again. I want to buy them training

I survived into day LX, but finally realized I haven't been managing my kingdom very well, making further progress impossible. Back to lab again, I guess.

polypusher wrote:

Still enjoying this. I got to day 21 and died, my first death. It's definitely tough to decide how to spend what little money you get. It's also frustrating to watch your walls get chipped away while your archers miss over and over again. I want to buy them training :)

I almost had lone goblin break through a wall day one. I was just standing behind my archer thinking, "I gave you the wrong job."

I've managed to claw my way to Day 32, but I can't seem to make my kingdom progress further (still on the same wooden walls/towers, one catapult to each side, and trying to maintain my number of archers). I don't think I'm going to survive the onslaught that'll be coming on the night of Day 35, as I just barely got through Day 30 and am still trying to repopulate my kingdom.

Finally beat this terrible, terrible game. I enjoyed every minute of it, other than the last 6 hours or so. Only 13 hours of total play-time, so I guess I should consider myself lucky...finally won on night 78. See spoiler below for my strategy. Seriously though, great game for $10.

Spoiler:

When you start the game, make sure that on one of your sides you have access to 3 camps before the first portal. Preferably at least 2 are within easy range of your starting walls. Also, make sure the stone temple is on the map on one side or the other. If these conditions aren't met, just restart. If they are, only expand in the opposite direction from the camps, and make sure you don't chop down enough trees to destroy the closest camp to you. In the direction you're expanding, eventually you want to end up with at least 2 farms. Don't upgrade each farm until you have solid walls outside where the farm is. Keep expanding in the one direction until you hit the river. Your priority should be hitting the 3 camps on the non-expanding side every other night, to get 6 men each time. When you hit the river, spend 6 nights or so gathering up men, and then you can focus on pushing in the 2nd direction. I had enough archers by that point that I was able to clear all 3 portals on the 2nd side even though I didn't hit any more camps after destroying my 3. Also, on the blood moon nights, if you're worried about your defenses but have plenty of cash, you can ride out to near the portal in the afternoon and then drop gold continuously while running back. Each gold is one fewer creep to hit the walls. By the time you're expanding in the 2nd direction, you should have enough gold from the farms that wasting it is trivial. Hope this helps!

Slightly spoilery question.

Spoiler:

I smashed 2 portals on one side and then I ran into a wooden bridge that I couldn't cross and no more badguys seemed to come from that direction. Did I 'beat' that side? I was doing great on that round except I was standing too close to a wall when those floaters came at me. I guess they can scoop the crown right off your head.

@polypusher,

Spoiler:

yes, you beat that side.

polypusher wrote:

Slightly spoilery question.

Spoiler:

I smashed 2 portals on one side and then I ran into a wooden bridge that I couldn't cross and no more badguys seemed to come from that direction. Did I 'beat' that side? I was doing great on that round except I was standing too close to a wall when those floaters came at me. I guess they can scoop the crown right off your head.

Spoiler:

My last death was the exact same - smashed two portals and died to a floater, learning they can just grab it, doh!

My kids and I have been playing this since I watched Certis' video. When they play, they take turns at each sunrise, and usually get destroyed by day 15.

I figured out a couple key things, though I haven't gotten to fully use them yet, as I got a bit overconfident. Figured out one cool thing, and that got me to day 28, figured out another and that got me to...day 22. Cause I did a stupid. Wow is the game as rogue-like and unforgiving of my dumb move as advertised, but I didn't rage ALT-F4 or anything. I just sat there thinking, "Yep, that was a dumb move on my part" while planning what to do with my next play through. Given that I'm usually a twitchy "quick save" player...that's saying something awesome about the game.

My son keeps wanting me to look things up in a wiki, and I keep telling him, "No, no, that's what I'm liking in the game, that I'm figuring it out myself..."

+1 on the recommending it...

Anyone else playing the big update/new version of the game, Kingdom: New Lands?

While it has many mechanics of the original version, there's some very cool new stuff (other mounts...other stuff), and it spreads out the learning curve via the different "lands" or islands that you play on. As you make it off each island (and find certain...stuff) more content is unlocked for the next island. If you die, like I did, and end up back at island 1, you keep the stuff you unlocked...and you unlock more stuff.

Really loving it. Still relaxing and chill game that is secretly complex if you want. Or not. Even prettier with some of the new stuff.

I keep using "stuff" instead of spoiler tags, because...STUFF. No spoiling the stuff.

I'm playing it, and almost finished I think? I'm working on what I think is the last island. I was going to post my impressions once I actually finished.

Its pretty great. Still love the style and the music and the gameplay. I also like the hermits. The baker is the best thing ever.

Huh - what are all those things you guys are talking about? I found a ship that was new, and sailed off and got to a new land - Does that add new stuff? Or is this spoiler territory? Love the game as well - such a great idea!

I think part of the joy of the game is discovery, which is why I didnt go into much detail The hermits were a bit confusing for me. I dont think I figured them out for a few levels. There's a wiki around if you want to go getting details without learning them yourself.

So I put the game on my wishlist and kind of forgot about it since then.

When I first heard about this game people said that it had balance issues towards the end of the game where the enemy monsters would stack up to an impossible difficulty. You could defeat everything on one side but the other side would be too hard to finish the game. Having gone through many a patch and now an expansion I assume that's no longer the case?

Tamren - the expansion mostly fixes that, because each round now has a defined goal (the ship) that doesn't necessarily require you to defeat the outer portal.

Razgon - I'll let you discover it, but you'll start to notice changes...

Yep what Gremlin said. The original game was just the one huge kingdom, and decisions you made that you didn't know would affect you a lot later...you lived and died with. And it got crazy after so many game days.

With the New Lands, instead of one big place that might take 100 game days to defeat (and crazy invasion by that time), I'm usually to a new land by days 20-30. Also, there's an actual learning curve built in, with more and more stuff to do on each island, and less and less of a particular resource

Spoiler:

mostly those tents you recruit all your guys from, and easy money from the trader which doesn't matter cause by then you know how to make gobs of money

.

For a game with 3 buttons...really loving this still.

Tamren wrote:

So I put the game on my wishlist and kind of forgot about it since then.

When I first heard about this game people said that it had balance issues towards the end of the game where the enemy monsters would stack up to an impossible difficulty. You could defeat everything on one side but the other side would be too hard to finish the game. Having gone through many a patch and now an expansion I assume that's no longer the case?

In my experience, it was a matter of learning the strategies for approaching the end game. Sometimes you could still get bit by the random number generator, of course. Still, I wouldn't say there existed a real "impossible" difficulty.

Question about the hermit:

Spoiler:

How the freak do you use him? I got the little bearded guy to go on the back of my horse and then?? What?

Roo wrote:

Question about the hermit:

Spoiler:

How the freak do you use him? I got the little bearded guy to go on the back of my horse and then?? What?

Spoiler:

Take him to a top tier tower and he can upgrade it into something new! There are 3 kinds of hermits but I'll stop the spoiler there. That's enough to start with :)

Finally decided to try New Lands and I’m glad I did. Definitely better than my last backlog game I played (The Flame in the Flood). It took me 3 failures before I put it together to get off of the first island - learning a bit more each time. In my first game I killed the trader camp, which hurt. The second I made it to winter and had a death spiral since I had no source of income. I set sail on day 12.

Without spoilering anything, does the game change anything up on the other islands?

Spoiler:

I know from a post above that there are 2 portals on later islands

, but anything else that introduces some new mechanic or something else that makes the player approach the game much differently (without saying what the change is please)?

Yes, each of the other islands has some different stuff (and finishing an island unlocks new stuff for you).

It doesn't necessarily make the game super different--the changes are incremental , not transformative--but New Lands lets you play with a lot more toys.