A Kingdom for Keflings

"Mindless and addictive but may not be worth the points"

Introduction

A Kingdom for Keflings is a charming little game that will eat a lot of your time if you let it. It's a game that uses the Avatar system that Microsoft recently added to the 360. It's available for 800 points on the Arcade but it would probably be more reasonably priced at 400 for what it is.

Gameplay
6/10
This is a really hard category to score. The gameplay itself is fine but it is so repetitive and there are so few real challenges that it is hard to give it a higher score.

Keflings has you playing a game in the same vein as an RTS. You collect resources such as lumber, stone, etc. and take them to various workshops to construct buildings. The difference between this and a traditional RTS is that the focus on this game is building your town(and ultimately, your castle) instead of building an army and attacking other players. In fact there are no other players to combat and no actual difficulties to overcome.

In the game you are a giant that is helping out the tiny people called "Keflings". You have to help them build their town by giving them orders such as harvesting resources or carrying those resources between various buildings. As your Keflings collect resources you build new buildings from various blueprints that you unlock as you build more. The blueprint unlocking is very linear for the most part and only deviates slightly in some cases where you have to build two buildings to unlock the next or you have a choice between two buildings to build next.

At first it is fun to task Keflings with running between buildings and carrying your resources while you build to your hearts content. However, once you run low on a resource once your realize that the harvesters are doing their job fine but the carriers move too slow to keep the line running at a steady pace. When I realized that I walked faster carrying 25 of a resource than a Kefling carrying one of the same resource I set every Kefling in the town to harvest and I began doing the grunt work of carrying. I got things done a lot faster this way even if it was a little tedious.

The other downside as I mentioned earlier is that there are no hardships, no worries and no real point of playing this game. No enemies destroy your town, no natural disasters will ravage your buildings, you can never run out of a resource because along the map borders is an infinite supply. It just becomes a game of, "I will eventually build everything with nothing in my way to stop me." It's a time waster when it comes right down to it.

Graphics/Sound
8/10
The graphics are cartoony and bright, as is the music. It's very cheerful and cozy. The game moves between seasons as you play, each one with a different, happy little song. Where the game is lacking though is in the sound effect department. Besides small "thud" noises when you move things or knock down one of your buildings the only sound is of a Kefling screaming when you pick it up. The sound effects that are in the game are very quiet too compared to the music level(on default settings) so you may not even hear them.

Play Time/Replayability

You can spend a LOT of time playing this. Although it is simple it's addicting. You can pop into somebody else's online game, help them out for an hour or two and pop out as much as you'd like. You can go through it on the single player version for most of the achievements and then go through it again online for the Banner Tower achievements. All of the buildings are able to be moved and painted-repainted in one play through so it makes more sense to just use one file rather than start a new one. There is one instance where you have to pick one blueprint line or the other and there is no way to back track that decision so two playthroughs will allow you to see all of the content(so do one single and one multiplayer).

Final Recommendation

If you want a game that there is literally no way to lose, no way to screw it up and something that you can mindlessly play for hours this game is for you(or possibly your non-gamer partner). If you are looking for any sort of real challenge this isn't all that great for delivering that. Again, I believe this would have been better priced at 400 points. Play the demo and just know that there is nothing to the game other than what you see there. If that appeals to you, go for it!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/23/08

Game Release: A Kingdom for Keflings (US, 11/19/08)