A Kingdom for Keflings Review

What can I really say about A Kingdom for Keflings? This is one of the first games for the Xbox Live Arcade that uses the newest feature of the NXE which is avatars. The game is very easy to pick up and play.

Platform:XBLA
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: NinjaBee
Genre:Strategy & Sims
Release Date: 11/19/2008
Official Website
Writer: cc_311

Story
In terms of story the goal of the game is to make the biggest Kingdom possible. The game offers you different missions to accomplish. The progression of the game through the stories is very well done. It gives you the freedom and choice of which missions to accomplish. It will not take very long for you to get hooked on this game and then try to make every structure. Once you build a couple of houses and other structures you will have the option to build the Town Hall. Once you have this done you can elect one of your Keflings to be the town leader. After you elect them they will be your voice in the game. You can then pick them up and they will give you missions to complete which in turn will earn your hearts. The hearts are a valuable resource in the game. You will need hearts to build certain buildings and it will help bring more Keflings into your town. For me there wasn’t a lot of reading involved in this game. They are very short messages outlining goals and tasks that the Town Leader would like you to complete.

Game Play
Controlling the Keflings in my mind was very well done and easy to pick it up. That is what makes this title a game that you can just pick up and play. The first option you are giving in the game is what character you would like to use. They give you the option of using a pre-made character or your Avatar. You have complete control of your Avatar and you are able to control every aspect of the game through them. You start out by building a home and obtaining your first 2 Keflings. You can assign them to collect resources for you. At first you can’t collect every type of resource that is available. For every resource you would like to collect you need to obtain a special tool for each that will allow you to collect certain items. Some examples of the resources available would be lumber, rocks, and wool from sheep’s. The controlling of the Keflings is very simple. You can pick them up and place them in front of the resource you would like them to collect. Once they start to collect this resource you can then pick them up and place them in certain buildings. This will tell them once they are done collecting a resource they are to take it to this building for processing. The best part about controlling the Keflings is how you are able to punish them for being to slow in their job. You can walk up to any of them and kick them and they will go flying in the air. While your Keflings are collecting it is your decision on what building structures to make. With each building you make you unlock more blueprints to make more structures. Examples of buildings you can make are wood shop, stone mill, and schools. Every structure has a pre-determined amount of things needed to make each building and a designated spot for each piece. While building some of the larger buildings it may take a lot longer because of the amount of resources needed to make everything. The area for building and collecting resources seems like a very large area at first. Once you start building and collecting more the space will start to be a lot less and you will be searching for places to put buildings.

Graphics
The graphics in this game for me were very well done. The amount of landscaping they were able to put in this arcade title is amazing. Everything looks very polished to me and even when adding more buildings it still doesn’t lose anything. I felt that the look of the little Keflings walking was really neat to see. One of the things that are great about this game is the way the change seasons. The weather will change from summer to winter. And during the winter time the ground will be white with snow. Overall I am very happy with what they did with the graphics in this game.

Overall
A Kingdom for Keflings is a game that is very addictive. If you enjoy building cities and collecting resources then this is a game for you. I wasn’t able to try out the multi-player mode at all but it seems like it would be a lot of fun. I was very happy that I was able to pick this game up and play it. I had a lot of fun with it. This game is currently on XBLA for $10.00 or 800 MS points. I recommend at least trying the demo because I really feel like this game was really well done and a lot of fun to play.

Christy Pirlot
Aka: dashadow knowz