A World of Keflings is one of those games that can pleasantly surprise you. Having not read anything about the game or its predecessor, I went into the experience with no previous knowledge of the gameplay and what I found was that A World of Keflings is a short, but enjoyable kingdom management game that has enough charm to warrant a purchase.
From the onset, AWOK gives you the ability to create an avatar from the system’s Miis. After being unfrozen, your giant avatar is given command over the numerous Kefling civilians to build a kingdom and tame the land around you. You begin in a snowy kingdom where the game teaches you to craft several different structures using your Kefling minions. Each structure requires a number of resources to build and these must be acquired from the various materials throughout the surrounding area.
Your avatar has the ability to mine, cut, and harvest the various materials throughout the land but what fun is ruling a kingdom without being able to command its inhabitants? Like any good RTS, you can command your minions to do the various actions themselves. AWOK is unique in its simplistic but interactive system of commands: rather than dragging a cursor over troops and sending them to various areas, you must literally pick up Keflings and carry them to the actions you want accomplished. Thus, a Kefling dropped by a tree will cut it down and rather than do something with the resultant materials, the Kefling will continue to cut down trees ceaselessly unless you tell it otherwise.
Next, you can either assign a second Kefling to become a transporter of the harvested wood, or give the woodcutting Kefling a second job of carrying its materials on its own. Thus, you can see the freedom created through the game’s mechanics and creating an efficient system is completely up to the gamer.
Interacting with the Keflings also creates for a bit of humor. First of all, the tiny beings have silly personalities that lead to a laugh or two (such as the witch demanding you acquire the “lost fluffy puppy dream” resource to create a potion). Also, aside from picking up the Keflings, you can also help them to gain levels after they’ve worked long enough. Once you see an arrow above their head, you can increase their level by giving them a fell kick or bopping them on the head. This slapstick humor made me laugh and helped to lighten up the drawn out campaign.
Once your Keflings have gathered materials and brought them back to the workshop, you can craft various 1×1 materials used for building. These include all sorts of different structures such as towers, kitchens, and walls. By assembling these structures according to the various blueprints unlocked throughout the game, you can create new structures with additional functions such as a woodcutter for turning logs into planks of wood or a witch’s tower for creating stat boosting potions and harvesting crystal. A sequential list of blueprints allows you to move from structure to structure, adding to your kingdom’s abilities and furthering the storyline.
Once you’ve built several structures in the snow world, you can repair a portal to a grassy kingdom which consists of far more structures to concoct. Other kingdom’s await such as a desert land and a world of treats. The game is fairly lengthy but the gameplay does become a tad repetitive after your 20th building or so is constructed (though the various lands allow for some freshness).
A World of Keflings does make use of the gamepad’s abilities by providing an interactive map to allow you to quickly craft at your various structures, as well as keep tabs on where Keflings are and which ones can level up. I found the map to be very helpful once you take command of 20 or so Keflings and have 30 or so buildings throughout the land. This makes resource management much more efficient in the long run. One small complaint, however, is that you cannot turn off the map and play the game solely on the gamepad without the TV (the game’s gameplay is simplistic enough where this could work in case you have a shortage of TVs in your house and are having competition over the living room).
AWOK also allows you to take up kingdom management with a friend locally. This allows you to breeze through the game and helps immensely to have a second intelligent being alongside the simple minded Keflings. Whichever way you decide to play, the game is enjoyable in either form and addictive through the experience.
