Games Review: KingMania by 300AD.com

Tough week ahead and it’s only Monday! I got to get back to being used to early mornings and late afternoon shifts. If there’s a virtue in taking up 9-to-5 jobs other than an excuse to get out of the house, I’m all ears. Otherwise, I wonder if there’s a market for free-lancing?

Being able to slept in is a benefit to my dreams as a columnist writer. Hehe, skip my ramblings. This entry is about a game I’ve recently cracked and very much enjoyed.

There’s not a lot of 3D action strategy games available for download from the Internet and I supposed that’s why KingMania caught my attention. By viewing the screenshots alone, I thought it could be as complex as that huge 3D download Depths of Peril (I’ll make a review on DoP once I’m done with Dungeon Siege 2 expansion).

You know what? It ain’t.

300AD.com's KingMania is all about potatoes.

Your city built on stones and potatoes.

The story goes... Actually, there is no real storyline. It’s a command-and-conquer game, where you start on this tiny island in the middle of an archipelago of tiny islands. Everybody’s got a death grip on their islands, including you, because... really, you need to eat and there’s not enough land to plant potatoes.

So what do an impoverish king to do?

Turn barbarian, of course.


Pillage and plunder for potatoes!

The gameplay is fun and engaging, kind of reminded me of a simplistic version of the Heroes of Might and Magic series. You start with a castle of a settlement and then raise enough muscle of knights and peasants to take over a neutral or enemy’s buildings.

Unlike HoMM or the Warcraft series, there aren’t any heroes with special powers or being able to assemble a battalion or build new buildings. Just take-over whatever peasant settlement you can grab your greedy hands on, beef up the upgrades and bully your opponents to submission.

Sure is a lot of work for potatoes.


Dragons powered by potatoes!

I think the tricky part of what makes KingMania so good (that isn’t about potatoes) is the visualization and story dialogue. It kind of get repetitive after the first 10 or so conquered islands, but it’s the kind of game which you can play for a quick few minutes in between long periods of office work.

I duly recommend KingMania for the work-weary who needs more than coffee in between projects and assignments. It’s comically funny and it’s not hard to get immersed in.

Now... what the heck am I going to do with all these potatoes?


Let’s bake them potatoes in our fire towers!

PS: Downloads for this game can be found in Reflexive Arcade. If you want the cracked version, ask me nicely.