Kingdom: New Lands review

Meh

by Brahmaputra

Kingdom review The game is very clever. I've sincerely enjoyed most of the "*you* figure it out" challenges. However a bit too often I feel frustrated rather than justifiably challenged. Ive spent perhaps 4-5 hours on this game in total, only reaching the 2nd island, and I dont really feel like playing the game any further. Im not expecting my grievances to get addressed in New Lands, but Im hoping a lot of my feedback can be incorporated into the sequel, Two Crowns. ## Major grievances ### The starting crew After making it to the 2nd island, at first it wasnt clear to me why I had these extra people. I thought maybe it was a bug. I later realised they came on with the boat. Its a great feature; I was very excited to not have to go through the mundane process of building up all the basics again. But at some point I started a new game, not realising that these additional NPCs were somehow part of the saved progress that Id be losing by starting a new game. I thought new game was the same as restart. This is incredibly frustrating: I still have access to the 2nd island, but in order to play it with a starter-crew, I need to replay the 1st island again? Thats not fun. It's cool that I can have an impact on the next level, but at least just default it to the highest scoring crew I've managed to bring over to date (count by coin value. If same coin value, the latest combination wins) ### Undo incomplete actions I desperately need the ability to undo an incomplete action, e.g. a building that has not yet been built or a tool that has not been picked up. Once, when trying to start galloping, I accidentally swiped up instead and ended up ordering a tree-choppin. This was the last tree before the closest town; suddenly the nearest town was gone (which I knew would happen, as I had uncovered this mechanic with great excitement in an earlier try), all because of a silly misclick. ### Catapult should always be moved inside ...even if the outermost barricade is to the right of it. Choosing to not build a new wall outside of my castle perimeter (I.e. Getting a bunch of upgrades for free) is a legitimate strategy for the right-hand side. Why shouldn't it be so for the left as well? Instead I ran into the very frustrating scenario of building & manning my catapult, only to realise that it would remain outside, unguarded and useless. ### Other: - The arrows in the level select menu are very unprecise and appear to malfunction quite a lot. No need for the arrows; just make it pure touch-controlled. - If I skip the tutorial, the KINGDOM title still stays up, so theres that weird intros scene but backwards when I run past there. ## Suggestions ### No need for randomly generated areas Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but why the random areas? What is gained from it? In a survival mode it would make sense. But in the vanilla game there is a progression from one island to the next. I'd have a lot of fun treating each map like a purposefully designed puzzle that challenges me in different ways, e.g. maps with an abundance of farmland but no merchant, or just a bunch of rabbits dens, or only one distant hermit town etc. ### Other: - Maybe let me sell buildings at a loss? - Some major savepoints, like every V or something. - Let me sell buildings at a loss. In particular Id like to decommission knights. It's just ridiculous that you can have a knight with four archers stuck to one side of the wall while the other side is left unguarded if I don't have more archers yet. It makes for a silly scenario wherein, if youre super lucky, your knight dies just as you destroy the portal, and your archers can return to guarding the other side again. Thanks for a great game, and best of luck with the sequel!