I picked up Kingdom Classic from Humble Bundle when it was free. Both me and Loa picked up the game, and he started playing it the night before me. We had a shared enjoyed experience of it. Which is something I’ve missed. If we weren’t playing multiplayer together, we’d occasionally find a single player game and play it at the same time. And it’s such a fabulous way to experience a game with someone.
Over the weekend we kept sending messages to each other asking if we’d experience x, or maybe y, yet, and it was such a fabulous thing to have that between us again. We’ve been apart for most of the pandemic, and he’s working so much that we haven’t really played games together.
So what about the game, I’ve always been an avid fan of strategy games, of tower defense, and just banging my head against the wall as I learn how the mechanics of a game works. This game truly had it all! It was also incredibly pretty, and relaxing in it’s own way.
While I spend two days “off” this weekend letting myself zone out from everything, especially the election news, I luckily had this game on hand. I had already been eyeing Kingdom Two Crowns for quite a while, but I’d been waiting with buying it because at the moment I’m not buying games unless I know I’m playing it pretty much immediately. My library has become unruly.
I’m going to publish some pieces behind spoilers, after this, but first I’m going to say: If you enjoy strategy and tower defense-esque games, along with some minor resource management I highly recommend this game.
Game mechanic spoilers that I think are enjoyable to experience for yourself the first time. But also me and Loa’s interactions while playing the game.
First day of playing it myself, I shot a message to Loa fairly soon asking: Have you lost your crown yet?
His response was “lololol, yeah”
It was the first thing that happened to me because I wanted to explore the map, and just didn’t know what the mechanics were like
A followup, I also acquired Kingdom: New Lands at some point via Twitch. And I set out to play it recently. Since I had managed to beat the Classic version, I was excited to try out a different way to experience this game. And oh boy did I enjoy it! Exploring in a new way, and discovering “blueprints”, which I honestly thought were map segments in order to help you travel to another region. and then having a more wider variety for how you can experience the game.
I did end up looking up some details, because I wasn’t sure how they worked, and I am kind of at the point in my life that, if I can’t figure something out and it’s just driving me up the walls I’ll look it up, it doesn’t necessarily detract from my experience. And I believe that if you feel like it would detract, you could just NOT look it up. But I do appreciate that it can be difficult to know what is “safe” to look up. Will it spoil something.
I noticed something, that you may appreciate knowing, and that’s that most of the wiki for the game, has all 3 games in the same articles, because they built on the same architecture, and do certain things differently.
End game spoiler for Kingdom: New Lands
I unlocked everything and ended up on Skull Island, which is a lot closer to how Kingdom Classic is, but bigger (I think it’s with 3 portals on each side). And you can’t access some of the really cool features of the other maps, if you want something special you have to bring it.
This for me builds up replayability. And I’ll probably keep this game installed for a long while so I can experience it over and over again.
One nitpick I have is that there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward way to reset your progress entirely, like if several people use the same computer for gaming, and sharing the library. But I’m sure there’s ways around that if I really wanted to.
If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments and that will be my goal going forward too.