A surprising twist on the strategy and resource management genre, Kingdom Two Crowns offers players a mostly serene experience with gorgeous art and limited direction that may frustrate players not willing to uncover its secrets.
Build, explore, defend. The tenets of Kingdom Two Crowns should be familiar to any player who has spent a handful of minutes in a game where success is based on the ability to harvest resources and expand your influence. A small base of operations will soon becoming teeming with life as tendrils of economy allow the player to stretch farther into the given map. You may recognize the pattern in any number of RTS games, tycoon simulators, or civilization builders.
Kingdom Two Crowns approaches these standards in many of the familiar ways. Players collect currency, recruit new units, add buildings onto their base, and gain the ability to further dive into the world. But the strangest, most exciting thing about Kingdom Two Crowns is in its unique perspective. A two-dimensional plane is not a groundbreaking standard for games, it has been done for decades. However, this is the first time I have seen its execution in this particular genre. The implementation is mystifying in its successful ability to translate elements typically spread out over an isometric view.
To play through Kingdom Two Crown is an initially odd experience, especially considering the game’s insistence on abandoning specific norms. When a game like this wishes to provide its players with something new, a number of tutorials are expected. I cannot count the amount of pop-up bubbles I’ve seen after crafting a new structure that allows for a new type of unit to be constructed. This also applies to the amount of times I’ve hovered over an element of the HUD, praying for a tooltip that would divulge a crucial piece of help. Kingdom Two Crowns almost delights in its virtually HUD-less world. Most of its direction and guidance are conducted by the player’s own victories and failures rather than an omniscient deity or programmer.
The game begins with a monarch atop their steed being hailed by a ghost to follow. Galloping from left to right, the player runs over several gold coins which the helpful specter insists should be spent on the game’s brief moments of tutorialization. By pressing a button, players can drop a coin near a peasant to recruit them to their meager kingdom which begins as a campfire. From there, two coins can be spent to turn one of these recruits into a bowman that will defend the kingdom, or three coins will make them into a builder that will construct walls and towers and mills. During the day, bowmen will hunt the fields for game that is converted to gold coin. The ghost tells players that a coin can be “spent” at a tree to have a builder cut them down and open up new spots where new structures can be built.
Then the night comes. Your citizens will, hopefully, retreat to the center of your kingdom which, hopefully, is protected on both sides by walls. Soon an evil force named The Greed attempts to break down your walls, stealing gold or attacking your citizens. By the time the sun rises, your bowmen have, hopefully, killed The Greed or your walls have stood long enough, allowing you to repeat the process all over again.
Often being a double-edged sword, Kingdom Two Crowns is a difficult game to constantly enjoy. By having the briefest of explanation given to the most basic elements of the game, players are asked to figure things out on their own. Any true progression is done when the player experiments and for games, that is a constantly rewarding feeling to not have your hand always held. Outside of any pause menus or the prompt indicating the currency required to upgrade or unlock something, players will rarely see a HUD, text, or single “intrusive” element that will distract from what is taking place on the screen. For such an often stunning game, this is a godsend. Kingdom Two Crowns is an aesthetic gem. Its moody forests, fantastical structures, and attention to detail come to life in stark, radiant pixels. I initially thought that half of the screen real estate being taken up by a reflective river would be a loss, yet it grows into another engaging element of the game. Subtle environmental effects occur throughout the kingdom’s expansion, showing that real thought has been put into making not just the horizon line of action the most interesting thing to see. Just watch as you begin to cut down trees and expand your kingdom. The towering structures in the background soon track with the player, making this two-dimensional presentation feel just a bit more like a three-dimensional space. Especially poignant is the minimal soundtrack that features a number of different instrumental pieces that often choose to play when the player is far from home or coming back from a long return journey.
Yet these high points will likely come at a price for a large group of players who are not completely swept up in Kingdom Two Crowns‘ aim. Take, for example, a handful of my initial “failures” when I first began playing. After a few days of calm, rote defense, I began to run out of coin to fuel my kingdom’s expansion. Chickens were no longer appearing with enough proximity and frequency for my bowmen to generate a decent income. I had upgraded most of my structures to the point where I could no longer do so–indicated by a picture of a rock with a red slash going through it. The camps where two peasants would appear once a day yielded nothing because I couldn’t give them any tasks. What I didn’t realize was that I had to set out further either left or right to discover treasure chests packed with coins that helped with massive expansions. Shame on me, I forgot the game’s insistence on “explore.”
In-game days later I had reached a point where my defenses were fairly secure and out of nowhere the ghost appeared again and directed me to the broken remains of a boat. Apparently this would help me further explore new lands that held new benefits. Over the next few in-game days I tasked my builders with repairing the boat and, because I had no idea what I was doing, pumped two coins into the harbor bell at the dock. I watched as several of my bowmen and builders hopped onto the boat and stayed there, leaving my kingdom with less defenses. Eventually I invested a large amount of my coins into the boat not knowing what would happen, only to watch my king sail away with his followers, granting the option to travel to a new island. Unfortunately, on this new island I had no coins and couldn’t build up defenses fast enough to protect from The Greed. During a different playthrough, I accidentally set sail on my own, with no one on my boat, ensuring the voyage would soon fail.
Soon enough, players will become wise to the perils of Kingdom Two Crowns. Death results in a new descendant taking over with the kingdom in disrepair. The disadvantages towards a bad “run” can be monumental but not insurmountable. But then one of the game’s biggest downfalls reveals its ugly head: traversal. Everything in Kingdom Two Crowns is done on a strip of land from left to right. Yes, it’s a clever, almost ingenious touch but it also becomes an annoyance quickly into the process. Players never leave their mount and eventually, that mount becomes exhausted and must walk to recover energy. At first, this isn’t an enormous problem because players will want to keep close to their central camp without venturing too far. Quickly, though, the game’s crucial insistence to expand requires drawn-out moments of running far left or right to search for coin or new peasants to recruit. With the starting mount, it will likely take players a full in-game day to travel the whole way in one direction and back. If a land you are on has a peasant camp far away, chances are you will only be able to recruit two new units a day.
This equates to large chunks of the game being the player running on their mount, walking, then running again. Sometimes, players might recruit peasants all the way across the map who will then be ambushed by The Greed on their slow trek to your camp, meaning a waste of time and resources. There were times I would actually be running back to my kingdom only to be met by a Greed portal halfway there and get attacked, losing some of my coin or worse, rare gems that players use to permanently upgrade troops or discover new things. It takes far too long for players to get a new mount. And in the base game, the starting mount has no defensive capabilities. During these more frustrating moments, it would be nice to have some kind of visual indications that aid the player in figuring out what’s going on. Where are new peasants? What structures need repairing? Even a mini-map during a pause menu would go a long way in helping players better map out their time.
During my most successful playthrough, I nearly covered the entire starting land with my structures and troops before moving on to the second land. I endured the agonizing back and forth to indicate trees that needed to be cut down and structures that needed to be built. Soon enough, I ran out of things to do because I couldn’t even find peasants, my bowmen had nothing to hunt, and the gold I was making from grain harvesting was going to waste because you can’t hold infinite money. After establishing myself in the second land with much harder to kill Greed, I rushed to construct the boat–which apparently crashes every single time you travel to a new land–and set sail for my starting land with gems in tow. There I was able to upgrade my bowmen and find a new mount before running out of gems. I realized I would have to do a lot more running back and forth to yet again get the boat back up into sailing condition.
Players will eventually unlock faster means of travel and deeper upgrades in Kingdom Two Crowns. Ultimately, however, the problem is getting there. Much of the game is an enjoyable exercise in discovery and learning. But it can be painful having to slog through a lot of the unnecessary traversal, which isn’t a fault of the two-dimensional direction but of the initial mount’s endurance. Otherwise, any major problems are alleviated with time, going to the internet for some tips, or engaging with co-op. Co-op is a strange beast in Kingdom Two Crowns because it allows two players to work together for a common goal. Both players have the ability to go to the left and right of the screen, shaving off several minutes of traversal time just by simply playing the game. It might result in having a bit more fun but can detract from the solo joys.
To supplement the base game, players also have the option of engaging with specific challenge lands that will test their skills learned in the campaign. Additionally, there are two free “expansions” that are currently available. The Shogun expansion takes place in a setting inspired by feudal Japan while the Dead Lands expansion borrows from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Each introduces new mounts and new visual flair that slightly soften the initial difficulty but mostly just allow for players to swap their preferred aesthetic.
Kingdom Two Crowns is not for those seeking out a traditional strategy or management game. It merely skirts the edges of the genre to present a unique vision of how this type of game may play out through a different perspective. Intense and difficult moments are often traded out for a serene blend of exploration and discovery. Though it has its pacing frustrations, those keen enough to go out of their comfort zone should find depth and satisfaction in Kingdom Two Crowns.
