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Beautiful pixel art, simple side scrolling strategy | Full Review - Kingdom Two Crowns+
947 View2023-05-09
Kingdom Two Crowns+ is a 2D side scrolling strategy game that features beautiful pixel art, a serene soundtrack, and challenging empire management strategy gameplay.
🟩Pros
+Gorgeous pixel art visuals
+Relaxing atmosphere
+Simple but additive Kingdom building mechanics
+Split-screen coop - shared touchscreen input or optional controller
🟥Cons
-Game may seem repetitive
-Traversing the literal 2 dimensional land may seem tedious
In Kingdom Two Crowns, players must build and defend their kingdoms from enemy attacks while also exploring the world and recruiting new citizens to join their cause. Players can customize their characters, upgrade their defenses, and even tame wild animals to help them in battle. Kingdom Two Crowns+ is the Apple Arcade version that was recently released for the subscription service.
Kingdom Two Crowns+ is a unique experience that blends 2D side scrollers, strategy, exploration, and resource management into a beautiful and challenging pixelated experience. Developed by Noio and Coatsink, this game is a sequel to the popular Kingdom series and builds upon the gameplay mechanics of its predecessors while adding new features and improvements.
The game's premise is simple: players take on the role of a monarch tasked with building and defending a kingdom from enemy attacks. Players can only move left or right on a 2D pixel world. There is a main underlying resource which is the gold coins, which is used to basically do almost all actions in the world. Players must explore the world, gather resources, and recruit new citizens to help them in their quest. Along the way, they must also build and upgrade their defenses to fend off increasingly powerful waves of enemies, and slowly expand their territory.
The town hall is the main structure that the player can upgrade and defines the current tier level of the Kingdom. Moving up tiers may require different technologies or characters to be discovered and recruited such as gathering stone and iron. The kingdom management aspect is very simple but totally addictive — just accumulating gold coins and occasionally gems to upgrade everything.
While the player is building his Kingdom, he can also roam around the 2D side scrolling island and encounter many gameplay features like ruins, wild beasts, gold or gem chests, and enemy portals to cleanse and capture. The player can also build a ship and travel to another faraway island with the promise of obtaining higher tier technologies and continue building a kingdom there.
Kingdom Two Crowns+ features gorgeous pixel art visuals. The game world is rendered in stunning pixel art detail, with vibrant colors, immersive lighting, and intricate 8-bit animations that bring the world to life. The sound design is also excellent, with a calming soundtrack that perfectly complements the gameplay.
One of the key gameplay mechanics in Kingdom Two Crowns+ is the management of resources. Players must carefully balance their spending and investment of gold coins to ensure they have enough resources to build and upgrade their defenses while also having enough coins to perform other actions such as upgrading the town hall and other structures, or recruiting more people.
The gold coins also serve as the functional HP for the main character. Getting hit by enemies will cause the gold coins to drop until they are depleted, at which point the crown drops and the monarch dies if the crown is not retrieved. This creates a sense of tension as players must make difficult decisions about where to allocate their gold coins.
Kingdom Two Crowns+ also offers the ability to assign citizens to different types of roles to help in the development of the kingdom. Each role has its own unique abilities and strengths, and players must strategically choose which ones to recruit and when to use them. For example, players can choose to create builder units to help build the kingdom more effectively, or they may choose archers or pikemen to serve as hunters and soldiers, each of whom has different strengths and weaknesses such as range and damage.
However, the game is not without its flaws. Some players may find the gameplay to be too repetitive or slow-paced, especially when you already have a big kingdom spanning a wide amount of land to cover. I find the back and forth-ing around the kingdom can be tedious. Additionally, the game's difficulty can be unforgiving at times, with the player character having no option to properly do combat and have to rely on his citizens, and the enemies becoming increasingly powerful and difficult to defeat as players progress through the game.
The game also includes a split-screen co-op mode, which allows players to team up with a friend to take on the challenges together, with both players controlling each side of the touchscreen, or an optional physical controller connected over bluetooth. This adds an entirely new dimension to the gameplay, as players must work together to coordinate their defenses and manage resources effectively. The co-op mode is seamless and easy to jump into anytime in the game’s settings, and easy to turn off once the session is complete, making it a great option for players who prefer to play with friends.
Conclusion:
Kingdom Two Crowns+ is an excellent game that offers a rich and rewarding gameplay experience. Its beautiful pixel art visuals, calming soundtrack, and simple but addictive gameplay all combine to create a game that is both unique and memorable. The game's simple controls, mechanics, and pixel art are perfectly translated for a mobile game experience.
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