King of the World

Review

Defeat your enemies on land and sea in this real-time strategy game, either in a single player campaign or with up to twelve players online, King of the World is brought to you by Contec Games.

You start the campaign in Barony of Rungsted, where you hear the clunk and clatter of a peasant uprising against you in the village outside your walls. You call to arms your finest warriors to quell this rebellion. After putting an end to the uprising, you discover that it was Duke William who had orchestrated the attack. You decide he must be stopped from getting a foothold in the surrounding region, so you march out to take control of the surrounding villages yourself before he does.

Each turn lasts sixty seconds, and once up it will give you some coins to buy more units for your army. The number of coins you get depends on the number of regions you control; the more regions, the more coins you get, the more coins, the bigger your army can become. There are usually two towers per region to conquer before that region is yours.  Conquering more regions will also give you more reinforcements, which spawn at the flag points within your region. You don’t have to pay anything for these, so don’t forget to put them to use.

The coins are displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, where it will also tell you how many regions you currently occupy, how many turns have passed, how long until the end of the turn, the total income for each turn and the amount of coins you currently have available to spend. In the bottom left corner, you’ll find a map of all yours and the enemies towers currently under control by each side; blue for you and red for the enemy. To the side of the map is a paper and quill and clicking this will tell you the current objective (just in case you forget in the heat of battle). On the bottom centre of the screen is where you’ll find the information on any unit available to you. You can also use this to buy the units you require (or you can use the pre-set keys) by clicking on a tower you control and selecting the units you’d like; they will then spawn ready for battle.

Depending on your current game you can have some different units to choose from; for example, in the first act you can call upon the local militia, but in the second act they’ll be replaced with men-at-arms. The cheapest units, the spearmen, cost one coin, followed by archers at two coins, scholars (healers) at three coins, men-at-arms at five coins and the household guards at twenty-five coins. When buying the spearmen, archers and scholars you’ll get one unit per buy but for the men-at-arms and household guards you’ll receive six of each unit per buy.

Taking over the towers on the map as fast as you can is a must - the enemy can already have all but a few of the towers to start with, so hit them quickly and hard while building your army at the same time. There will be objectives to complete in order to finish a map but losing all your towers or your king before these are completed is game over.

There are three different eras to play: the medieval army, modern army and the sci-fi army. Each of these armies has different skins you can change to play as, and you start with one skin for each era. You can, however, unlock more through buying them with rewards you’ve collected through the victories you’ve had. Each new skin will cost five-hundred coins, except for one in the modern army, which you’ll have to unlock from with in the game. The medieval army has four skins (stop laughing, I didn’t say foreskins), the modern army has five skins and the sci-fi has one extra skin for you to collect and play with, all to give you a new look on the battlefield.

You can also play online against twelve other players in a free-for-all if you like!  Every player will start with the same conditions, so even novices like me can take on tactical masters and have a fighting chance of winning. You can also customise an online game if you want to play with fewer players etc. Coming in the full release will be the option to team up with friends in teams of two and six players.

The maps are of a good size and graphically look very nice, along with some decent background music and sound effects. I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game, even though I’m no master tactician and got my botty spanked.

In the options there’s Video - Quality (Lowest to Ultra), Resolution, Fullscreen, Sounds (Music and SFX volume). On the main menu you’ll find your profile which lets you know how many victories, defeats, kills, highest rank, current rank, along with a leader board of your rank and wins for online play. There is a tutorial to play through, so you can get to grips with how the game plays.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!