KingdomGame - My Review
KingdomGame is a realtime strategy game played in a browser. It is not limited to the iphone and can be played on any browser, but as I found, its easier to play on an iphone/touch than on a PC.
If your expecting graphics forget it, this game solely relies on the imagination and determination of the player. Graphics aren't everything as this game proves and if any of you have played Planetarion or any of its clones you will be familiar with the highly addictive numbers you watch count up and down!
KingdomGame adds an extra twist, if you've played Settlers its like that too!! Settlers with numbers instead of graphics, you can construct buildings, and train your troops, you have to keep a regular eye on things as people will attack you and you need to rebuild, saying that, you also have to build the right types of buildings. Buildings also take varying amounts of time to construct,
You have 4 types of income, food, stone, lumber and Gold Coins, along with your land area. This is where a lot of the strategy lies to a successful kingdom. if your not producing enough food for everyone people will leave, you need stone, lumber and Gold Coins to construct buildings and somewhere to put them! The people you train also take some of your profits, Knights eat a lot and want loads of GC's, where as the peasant is very cheap but not really good to defend your lands. There is a balance tied in with what buildings you have that can take a while to grasp but it doesn't make you loose interest, you can always go attack someone
I have been growing my Kingdom for about 2 weeks now, its growing steadily now, just waiting for the reset so i can start on an even playing field. I've been doing 4/5 attacks a day on the other kingdoms around my size, i see why i should be using spies now!!!, some you win some you loose. The thing is its who's Number 1 at the end of the round thats the winner, and who that is could change many times before the game ends, who you going to aim to be after all?!?!?!!?
One advantage of this kind of game is its low bandwidth once you've cached a few images its pretty much text changes only and is quite responsive, even on plain old GPRS.
As this game is still in its infancy its very clean, and very polished, I have been speaking with the author and together we have added a minor improvement here or there, mostly shortcut streamlining, all just to make it as finger friendly as possible. My one gripe I would have is only with the popup keyboard, you only deal with numbers unless your sending a message or posting on the in-game forum, and it is a pain to have to keep on reselecting the number pane of the popup. We have worked round most of them, by adding other ways on the webpage to achieve the desired effect, ie, rather than typing 1 into "how many barracks" you can simply press the onscreen + to add 1, etc
Anyway, I have to go now, got some Kingdom's to rape and pillage...
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