Kingdom
OpenCritic Rating
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Kingdom
Kingdom skilfully pitches a powerful discover-it-yourself idea at just the right level, neither too frustrating nor too easy.
Kingdom initially impresses with striking pixel art and minimalist design, but later it proves complexity is necessary.
Kingdom is a fun, gorgeous management game, but trying to learn its mysteries eventually becomes a slog.
Kingdom very cleverly reduces a complex genre down to something digestible, but that same simplification struggles against its later scope. When your land grows too wide, traveling end to end becomes a chore (it can waste entire day/night cycles), while getting to that point requires gaming somewhat imprecise AI.
Ultimately Kingdom is a game that's easy to love. Combining exploration, micromanagement and strategy in a way that continually feels personal and intimate is no easy task, but it achieves it by forcing you to do everything yourself. While simplicity is the key to the game's mechanics, keeping everything on a very human scale is probably at the core of how it makes you feel. Very few strategy or management games manage to present things on a street level scale, but Kingdom does it perfectly and it's all the better for it.
Kingdom has solid ideas that get lost in its own simplicity. It's a little too conceptual, and I found that it had a hard time holding my attention after a few in-game days. It has a whole kingdom out there to explore, but it just isn't varied or interesting enough to warrant the type of commitment it ask of the player.
A simple yet entertaining "city builder" that'll provide a difficult challenge.
