Kingdom Classic is the original version of game that is known as Kingdom - New Lands I got this version in a Humble Monthly package 1 year ago. Looking for something quick to pick up, I decided to finally give it a go.

There's something rather relaxing about this one. Even if the RNG can sometimes kick your teeth out.

There's no real story here. You start off as a randomly selected King or Queen on horseback in the middle of a dense forest. You have three actions: Walk, Run, and Interact. Moving to the right you pass the game's title logo as a stone structure that crumbles as you pass.

Shortly after, you pick up a few coins and arrive at a campsite. Paying the plebs that are around, you set up a tiny fort and begin the adventure.

First thing to do is recruit an Archer and a Builder. You'll need at least one of each to get your kingdom started. Archers shoot baddies and hunt for food (that generates coin), builders build structures and repair them after the night waves.

Simple, right!

Each night you are attacked by monsters from the woods. They'll hit your palisades and walls in an attempt to kill off your plebs, and steal your coins. Each time you are hit, you lose a coin. And if you have no coins, your crown is knocked clean off your head.

It's then a rush to reclaim it before the monsters pick it up. As with no crown, you are no king or queen. But be sure not to wear out your horse too early, it is quite happy to say no to being pushed too far if it has been running all day.

Attacks increase in furiosity each night, and to survive you are going to need greater defences and more archers. Since these require coin, you'll have to venture out of your kingdom each day and expand your domain by building further walls, towers, fields, and slowly upgrading your existing structures.

There a aim of keeping the balance of owned coin, upgraded structures, and covered land. It is quite easy to stretch too far and not be able to defend what you claim.

Or in my case, waste coin on clearing the forest, when I should of used it to rebuild my catapults!

Visually it is rather pretty. Even for the time of release, pixel art was starting to feel overdone and everyone copying each other. Here the various weather and atmospheric effects, lake reflections, and idle nature movements help it step above a number of its contemporaries. There's lots of little things to make the environment feel alive, rather than just some static sprites.

The audio... Exists. It's such low level sounds and minor amounts of music that I mostly heard the fans of my PC over the game. It does pick up in intense moments, but for the most part is not there.

Tiny jingles on coin collection, or the sound of hammers assist in knowing when something has happened, but for the most part you can find your favourite ambient music and play that in the background instead.

Kingdom Classic is simple, and effective. It's a neat little pick up and play game to pass some time with. If you are good, you will survive. If not, well. Try again another day. And you may just make it a few more nights.

I will admit, I've not played 'Kingdom: New Lands', and thus can't compare the two right now.

Game Acquisition: Humble Monthly (April 2017)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 1 April 2018
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP
Processor: Dual Core
Memory: 1 GB RAM
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 512 MB available space