Your Own Kingdom
City and Civilization builders have been popular this year. From the humble Endzone: A World Apart to the triumphant Crusader Kings 3, there has been plenty of variety to build and customize your own little worlds. Kingdoms Reborn by Earthshine is a well-designed real-time city builder that has a ton to offer. It takes the traditional formula of a civilization simulator and puts a unique twist on it which makes things feel fresh. Don’t be fooled by its inviting aesthetic, however, as there is far more to this city builder than meets the eye.
Building From Nothing
From the start, Kingdoms Reborn hits you with a comprehensive world-builder. Of course there are parameters to just generate and go, but some experimentation with the system can create interesting results for the world you create. After loading into the world you are able to pick any land bound location to serve as your first territory. From here you can see the various resources available to you including Grapes, Cannabis and Coal deposits. Lumber, stones for masonry, and different conventional fruits are abundant and non-unique which makes it easy to deduce a good place to start based on the resources available to you. The tutorial is great and helps a lot for new players just getting into the game.
There isn’t much of a focus on combat or warfare in this game and the quests offered by the discreet tutorial do a great job to ease you into a resource management mindset. Small goals such as “build 5 houses” grow to “produce 1000 coffee” or 100 of your brand new commodity to meet the needs of the people. The graphics make this easy to look at and while they aren’t completely top of the line, the visuals teem with life when in-motion which makes your town feel that much more active. This is especially true at enhanced speeds.
The Brave, New World
Kingdoms Reborn offers a fun and unique style of progression. Instead of building down set down trees of constructions with each tier outdoing the last, you are first given a selection of cards. These cards can be anything from buildings to an opportunity to sell goods and are given frequently to the player. You even have the option to reroll the selections when given a spread you don’t like, which makes this process feel more personal. These cards make the game have a personality all its own and ensures no two cities you make will be built the same way, perhaps save for a few bits of the passive tech bonuses that accumulate over time.
The downside to all of this is the immense complexity in the later stages of the game. There are an incredible amount of options to consider, especially when you have a few solid hours under your belt to get through a few winters and see where your city really takes off. You’ll notice it when you begin to get hit with deluges of advancements with on-screen messages that demand money to compensate for them. Most of these are enticing but expensive and they hit you all at once. These are daunting choices that you can’t easily dismiss and at times are a sure-fire way to get the progress you need, while the alternative is rolling the dice and hoping you draw the card which you also need to buy. It makes the random nature of the game feel deflating when refusing an immediate buy means that I’ll need to take the time and money to roll for it again.
A Promising Legacy
The amount of polish on this Early Access title is astounding. From the unique progression to the lively and vibrant visuals, Kingdoms Rebon is a city-building sim that fans of the genre will appreciate. The game has a solid tutorial, but the later stages can prove to be a daunting affair for even those adept in playing games of the genre. The ability to not easily dismiss or minimize certain menus or decisions is also a downside that can disrupt game flow. Fortunately for everyone these nitpicks can only be resolved with time and offer a very small detriment to the overall fantastic experience of the game. This makes Kingdoms Reborn’s Early Access worth playing for anyone looking for a new and exciting twist on a tried and true formula.
