Kingdom New Lands is a title game that started as a simple project by Thomas van den Berg and Marco Bancale in 2015. And in 2016, during the Independent Games Festival, the game was recently nominated for the Excellence in Design award. After the success of “Kingdom New Lands”, the two developers had decided to launch a sequel to it called “Kingdom: New Lands” with a lot of updates and outstanding features.

“Kingdom New Lands” is the updated version all about surviving the nights and building up your kingdom land. Its objective seems quite simple, yet the gameplay can be tricky when it comes to strategy. The landscapes, the enemies as well as the citizens are newly-designed as the requests of the “Kingdom New Lands” ‘s community.

STORY

Players will become a king or a queen (with ethnicity, clothing, and royal crest are randomly generated) who has just arrived on a new island.  At the beginning of the game, a past ruler ghost will guide you to build your first camp for your people. There is no detailed tutorial, only a brief walkthrough just to show you how to perform actions in the game. It is up to the players to figure out how to develop their kingdom better.

Your main goal is to establish a new kingdom here and survive the night long enough to maintain and to build up a powerful, indestructible army to stop the demons from destroying your land. Nevertheless, it can be catastrophic and ruin everything you have built if you make a little wrong move. Focus on every action you take to avoid unexpected circumstances.

FEATURES

Uncomplicated and addictive gameplay

If you have played “Kingdom New Lands” before, you will not feel alienated with its sequel. There are five islands for you as a ruler to conquer, each one is deserted and wild, waiting for you to discover and build your new kingdom. Each island is more demanding than the previous one so, do not be too confident if you survive one, the chance is you might lose your kingdom on your first night.

Each island is divided into two areas: your land and the forest. The King or Queen will wander around the land and the forest, looking for peasants and craftsmen, hurl them with a coin and turn them into workers to develop your village. In order to know what each worker can do; players will have to assign gold to the tasks.

A big part of the experience is to learn how everything works through trial and error. It might take a while to work out the complexity of maintaining the infrastructure. Furthermore, the way to recruit newbies might take some time to get it right. It can feel like a misguided struggle of trial and error when days turn to nights when buildings are developed, workers do their jobs, etc.

Every resident is essential

In order to construct a kingdom, workers are necessary. Near the central camp the sides where smaller camps are located, potential workers are produced. You will need a coin to lure them to walk back to your camp, spend that coin to make them a worker, an archer, or a farmer, and eventually a knight.

Workers will cut down trees and build whatever you command them to do, and later on, they even have the chance to use the catapults to shoot the Greed. Archers’ mission is to hunt for nearby wildlife such as rabbits and deer during the day and earn you some coins while protecting your kingdom from the demons at night. If there is an empty tower, archers will move to defend it to have better aim at the monsters. Farmers’ specialty is to plant and harvest as another income source of the land. Like archers, the knights’ mission is to protect you, your residents as well as your land from the Greed, you can also send them to destroy the portals. Remember to carefully consider each job assigned since workers are scarce.

Yet, nothing can go well forever. If any of your residents are hit by a Greed, they will turn back to the original shape: a wanderer. After that, it costs you coins to bring them back. Managing your residents can be tiring and painful as they can put themselves in danger for no reason or run to defend a side that is not under attack.

Survive the night and grow your empire

The first few hours may be confusing for some. First, players have to strengthen the kingdom with walls and towers and build farms to produce coins. They can improve the buildings for the ultimate defense by using coins, the main currency, and the resource of the game. Forest can be used to find workers or to expand the land and defense of your kingdom by cutting down the trees. Thus, clearing out the trees means that you will also wipe all the camps off where workers are recruited.

It is crucial to managing your defense. If it is not strong enough, the monsters will crawl inside and figure out to destroy everything you have built. They will steal your cash and take away your crown. No crown means no king or queen, and a kingdom without a ruler cannot stand any longer. “Kingdom New Lands” is not an easy game, when you fail you basically start over.

The difficulty of each night increases as the days pass. Each game can end either one out of two ways: you will successfully sail to another island, or your crown is stolen, put an end to your kingdom. The game might seem appealing, but the gameplay is not simple to deal with. No tutorial is shown, no instruction tells you that destroying trees will destroy camps including the merchant’s, that this can kill your game and yourself as you struggle to make up for the lost income.

Being a ruler does not mean that you have full access to everything. You cannot do work or defense yourself, and your fate lies in the hands of your residents who you are trying to direct while theirs depend on your strategic decisions. All you do the entire time is go back and forth, ride on your horseback, and collect coins.

GRAPHIC VISUALS AND SOUND QUALITY

Graphics

“Kingdom: New Lands” is presented with beautifully designed and impressive lighting effects such as moonlight through trees, campfires flickering, and reflecting in the water. Weather varies from rain, storms, and clouds with magnificent landscapes. The addition of the weather and season cycle can affect the residents’ work, for instance, there will be fewer animals during the winter.

The control is quite simple, players can swipe left to go left, right to go right, and tap to spend money. Nevertheless, the framerate can be improved since it stutters quite often.

Music

The soundtrack is a mixture of elegant piano and synth, soothingly playing in the background. Sounds of the surroundings, such as tools clattering, church bells ringing, etc. will give players relaxation and the best experience of the game.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Reading instructions or watching videos online is not the solution, the best way to learn about is to play it yourself. There are features to learn and rules to discover. Once you have known how to survive the nights and maintain your treasury, you will be able to build your ship and reach the next island. All in all, “Kingdom New Lands” is worth your time and will give you a remarkable experience.