Kingdom: Classic

Kingdom, a minimalist strategy production featuring RPG elements, is the commercial version of an earlier browser flash game under the same title. The game was created by one-person Dutch studio called noio, founded by Thomas van den Berg, who received financial support from Nordic Games as part of a program promoting independent artists. From the outset the project has been created as a cross-platform production, designed for PC/Mac and mobile devices running on iOS and Android.

We assume the role of a king who gathers gold while traversing the world and then distributes it among the encountered settlers, thus acquiring new subjects. In exchange, the newly recruited people build and develop new villages, creating tools, weapons and fortifications necessary to defend the settlements against danger. Every night our lands are attacked by sinister trolls, trying to take the royal crown from us. Obviously, there can be no king nor a kingdom without a crown, so losing it means the end of the game.

Compared to the original, flash version of Kingdom, the game introduces a variety of improvements and modifications. The game world became larger and more diversified, and the characters populating it have impact on the gameplay. Introduced were also numerous new methods of defending our subjects against danger. In the woods surrounding our lands a large number of surprises awaits our king, from randomly generated skirmishes with opponents to a variety of useful perks supporting the development of our kingdom. There are also elements such as the weather, which has influence on e.g. the growth rate of crops and shepherds tending to flocks of animals, or fire that may affect our kingdom in both positive and negative ways.

Visuals in Kingdom are slightly improved when compared to the original, but they feature the same old-school pixel-art style. A characteristic aspect of the game is the lack of any interface, cursor, or command buttons. The production features a view from the side, unusual for this genre, which is reminiscent of classic platformers and modern sandboxes like Terraria.

Last updated on October 30, 2015