A cherry picker is someone, who only selects the ripest and healthiest fruits, in our case the most delicious mobile games suitable for a review. And I confess that I am kind of a cherry picker as I’ve chosen KingdomGame by Phutty Studios LTD, a massively multiplayer real-time strategy game. A medieval setting and an RTS game are like Christmukka for me- what could possibly go wrong?
Many projects in the pipe!
KingdomGame comes along with so many text boxes, tables, menus, that you feel like you’re playing a text-based adventure of The Patrician. When it comes to a consistent circulation of goods and logical assignments of human capital, this complexity and accurateness is a very good thing.
KingdomGame could be renamed in “KingdomManager” as you can control almost every aspect of your realms such as trade, religion or foreign policy. This might be the biggest strength of the game. You do not only slip into the nebulous role of a leader, you really feel like you’re leading your empire.
I also like the fact that your kingdom is in constant competition against other kingdoms. This adds a lot of thrill to your game and constantly brings you back to your phone to check if you could perform some new actions like constructing more buildings, training more troops or exploring more land.
The downside of the technocratic flavor is the bone-dry atmosphere of this game. I realize that this game is absolutely nichey, but the developers should spend a bit more time to juice it up so that it won’t deter every non-nerd, who accidentally installs it.
First of all, why is there no frigging map? Even if I wouldn’t be part of a cartographer’s guild, I would totally wish for a map, where I can see my kingdom, its borders, and its neighbors. I can easily go without fighting scenes, a city overview or anything else missing here, but please don’t save on the wrong things!
Lastly, I think adding some (medieval?) background music would do wonders for the games’ atmosphere. A little tweak with a massive outcome.
Look at my progress, yeah!
KingdomGame is the perfect app both for management game enthusiast and strategy game lovers. You can download it here.
All pictures are in-game screenshots.