Kingdom is a somewhat complex strategy game wherein your main goal is to build, well, a kingdom. You begin the game with no knowledge of how to play, and a brief tutorial fills you in on the starting basics; such as how to light your campfire, recruit beggars, and turn those beggars into builders and archers. In fact, Kingdom is really just a newer, harder version of Lemmings with hoards of enemies that will come for you in the night. Every fifth night, a flock of foes will overrun your quaint campsite, tear down your walls, pick up your people and fly off with them, and leave you in ruins. Yes, as the tagline suggests... nothing lasts indeed.
After picking your desired horse/gender/clothing color all in one go on the very first screen, and having the brief tutorial, the game thrusts you into its realm with no further knowledge of how to get by. It's trial and error from here on out, but it really doesn't take too much to figure it out. You build walls and archer outposts to keep the monsters out, gather hoards of beggars that you then turn into archers to kill said enemies, and then upgrade your walls and base camp; which, by the way, ends up becoming your castle. The trick here is that it costs gold coins to do all of these things, and at the beginning gold can be hard to come by. During the day, archers will hunt rabbits and deer, if you run out of rabbits you will then need to herd deer closer to your camp; this is much easier said than done, as they run much faster than you and you can only turn them around if you happen to get in front of them, even then they'll run back most of the time.
As you expand your kingdom, you will be able to recruit two more classes; the farmer, who will provide you with abundances of gold, and knights that will march toward the enemy gates at your command. Once these classes are unlocked, Kingdom basically becomes easy mode so long as you keep a plethora of archers around. There are four enemy gates, two on either side of your camp, that must be destroyed. Once every gate is destroyed, and every monster that has spawned from them is slain, you will have won the game. Beware, for if a monster attacks you directly, you will lose gold; when you run all out of gold, they will knock your crown off, take it, and it's game over.
The pixel artwork is beautiful, and the landscape has a variety of randomized weather throughout each day and night cycle; rain, heavy fog, bright sun, and sometimes a combination thereof. The atmosphere brought on by these sudden changes truly adds a depth of mystery to Kingdom, and the folk inspired soundtrack is the polish that adds a shine to the game overall. However, the title is not without its flaws and it comes as no surprise to me that the game is made in Unity; though it is 5 and not the personal edition, thankfully. If you have enough beggars/farmers/knights/archers/builders in your community, the framerate starts dipping ever lower. My FPS was 60 (the cap) for the large part of my play time, but once I neared the end and had a huge gathering of commoners in my community, my FPS dipped into the low 40s and hung there consistently; especially when adding any dropped gold or incoming monsters into the mix. This is simply unacceptable for a pixel based game that really doesn't have any complexity to it in terms of mechanics, ambiance, or graphics.
Unfortunately, I just cannot bring myself to recommend Kingdom; even for the small on-sale price of $5.49 CAD I feel rather ripped off. The area that you have to expand within the game is limited and small, and once you get the gist of how to manage your resources and faux-Lemmings, the game is incredibly easy. The trailers made the game seem a great deal larger, there are also a very small number of different enemies, nearly every beggar looks identical, and most of the walls/archer outposts look the same even after you've upgraded your castle. Kingdom is a game that has fell victim to overhype, it's okay... but not nearly as godly as other gamers make it out to be.
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