Sometimes you just want to be a giant and build stuff for a few hours... Or until 3 o'clock in the morning.
And if you're still feeling a little Godzilla-ish, you can always give the little people of the title a swift, consequence-free punt with your size-48 boot.
Kingdom is one of the very first titles to incorporate the new Xbox LIVE Avatars in-game. While you have the option of using one of the game's pre-made giants, it's a lot more fun to control you own self-created avatar as you seamlessly interact with the little Keflings, build things for them, and basically act as their benign overlord.
At first glance, the colorful graphics and premise may bring a sense of deja vu to those who remember the PC title Black & White. But there is a key gameplay difference: unlike that almost-masterpiece, in Kingdom the player directly controls his on-screen behemoth. There's no cursor used to cue up resources or make commands, either, as in the typical strategy game – your avatar is quite literally a "hands-on" boss. For example: you want a Kefling to mine for stone? Simply pick her up and deposit her by the rocky hills, and voila, she's a miner. Want your miner to bring the resource to the stone cutter? Pick her up again and drop her by the appropriate building, and a light bulb comes on over her head. She'll then transport a steady stream of rocks throughout the changing seasons that come and go in your little world, until you decide a better job for her. (Happily, the AI has nicely competent pathfinding.)
Building your Kingdom involves blueprints. Again, the actual process of building is "hands on" -- if you want to go all Edward Scissorhands on your Town Hall's hedges, you need to queue up the necessary components to build the Sculptor Shop blueprint. Then, you carry the cube-like components and place them one-by-one in the correct configuration to build the complete structure. The process lacks the speed and efficiency that a more hardcore God-sim might have, but there is instead a very real, almost tactile sense of satisfaction -- a feeling of having built your kingdom by hand – that has its own unique pleasure.
As you progress, more blueprints for more varieties of structures open up, and a button tap displays a tree diagram of currently-available blueprints. As in other strategy-type games, the more advanced buildings require more varieties of resources and building types before they can be constructed. Several of the buildings act as refineries that transform one type of resource into a more advanced resource, so that the complexity of managing it all ramps up almost invisibly. Want to decorate the town square with a splendid elm tree? First, you need magic gems, and those come from the Witch Hut -- but only if you direct some Keflings to deliver crystals for the magical hag to transform.
The slower pace may not be for everybody, but it's definitely intended by the designers as part of the relaxing, accessible vibe of this title. Adding to its simplified, chill-out charm is the fact that there are no bad guys in Kingdom. No armies will invade your kingdom and despoil the houses that you carefully built to attract new Keflings; no fire will destroy the forests you need to make wood planks; there's really no way to fail the game, in fact. You are constantly given goals towards building a full-on castle, and the Kefling mayor will give you mini-missions by which you can earn upgrades or little "love" hearts that allow you to bring new settlers to town, but there's never a deadline. You simply have fun in this sandbox and expand your kingdom, pressure-free. The game's relaxed pace can be deceptive, though: it's easy to find yourself thinking, "I just want to build that one more structure, and paint the roof lime green"… and then look up at the clock to find that hours have passed by.
On an audio-visual level, A Kingdom for Keflings is enjoyable if unspectacular. The cartoonish graphics have a colorful simplicity that sets the tone and keeps the increasingly complex landscape easy to read visually; but one can't help but wonder why the textures couldn't have been enhanced with a bit more detail or special effects. On the "pro" side of things, the simpler graphics help the frame rate remain chug-free, even when you end up with two dozen little people booking around doing their thing. On the aural front, Keflings has an upbeat kind of quasi-European-folk soundtrack that charms at first, but can eventually wear out its welcome over long play sessions. The sound effects seems purposely minimalist, with a few scant ambient effects and Kefling cries, but little else.
A Kingdom for Keflings is definitely on the casual side, and should be seen as more of an excellent warm-up for the heavy hitters of console strategy like Civilization Revolution, rather than their competition. The gameplay does get a little repetitive before you've maxed out the acreage of your kingdom, but for the price you pay, this Arcade game is one of the best values out there. It's a great title to keep on the hard drive and cue up every once in a while as a respite from the typical mayhem and monsters of the console world. And it's a perfect game for that grade schooler in your life who is Lego-crazy.
Sometimes you just want to be a giant and build some stuff. Ninja Bee has done an admirable job of fulfilling that fantasy.