So, a brand New Xbox Experience is being enjoyed across the world, with avatars being produced left, right and centre. But what would it be like if your avatar was a giant, helping to establish a wonderful kingdom? The answer’s right here – welcome to A Kingdom for Keflings.
This is the latest Arcade title from Ninja Bee, who have previously given us Cloning Clyde, Outpost Kaloki X and Band of Bugs – all of which are, I think, tip top titles. So, as you might expect, is Keflings.
The game concept will be familiar to anyone who has played, or been near to someone playing, games like the Settlers series. You have to establish a Kingdom, by gathering the raw materials available to you and developing new buildings along the way. And it’s a joy to play.
You start off in an empty plot. There is just one structure – the basic workshop – and a partly built square. The game proceeds to tell you that you’re a giant who can help the Keflings create the kingdom they deserve. It also, if you use your NXE Avatar (and really, why wouldn’t you), slags off your fashion sense with typical Ninja Bee humour. From this moment on, prepare to fall in love with the Keflings.
As you move around you’ll find yourself being followed by any job-less Keflings. They wave at you when you stop, just so you know they’re there. They want you to pick them up and teach them what to do – so get to it, it’s really that simple. Deposit a Kefling in the woods and they’ll become a lumberjack, plop them near the vast piles of stones and they’ll break them down for you. It’s really that simple. Once a Kefling learns a job, it will wear a little hat to show that it knows what it’s doing. If you want it to learn something else, simply take off the hat with a quick press of Y and deposit them somewhere else. You can also teach your miniature workforce to deliver their freshly harvested goods to the appropriate workshop or mill by picking them up and dropping them off at the correct building. They’ll then merrily go about their business until you tell them otherwise.
Building is simple – you unlock blueprints as the game progresses, building different structures leads you down different development roots. These blueprints tell you what components you need – the house, for example, needs a heath, some storage and a bedroom. These componets are produced seperately and once you place one down, the other parts are positioned relative to this – as shown by the shape on the blueprint. The game helps you out with this by showing a blue square where you need to place your parts.
You can increase your available Keflings by building a house, but no-one will move in until you fill the house with love. You have to earn love by doing various tasks around the Kingdom as set by the mayor (once you have built the Town Hall ). The early tasks are simple enough, mainly consisting of “deliver x number of y to a certain building” style tasks but they soon become more challenging requiring you to put a lot more effort into building the town.
Everything about the game is so simple to pick up, but it’s really hard to step away from – from the beautiful graphics and the ridiculously cute waving Keflings to the right level of Ninja Bee humour – practically every minute spent playing this game is just fun – and if you’re bored of waiting for your workforce to deliver enough rocks then get in there, roll your sleeves up and help them. They’ll appreciate it later.
If you’re feeling a little bit evil, you can kick the Keflings around. While this is fun the first time, I defy anyone to do it enough to get the “Big Bully” achievement and not feel really bad about what they’ve done. I kicked one poor Kefling so much yesterday that she literally ran away from me every time I went near her.
It was heart-breaking.
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