I really thought this would be the happiest news for hardcore fans of Kingdom, but it’s only OK.
We got a nice surprise a few months back, when publisher Raw Fury mentioned we’ll be getting a new level—the 6th island—for our beloved tower defens(ish) strategy game. I easily called Kingdom my favorite game in both 2015 (Classic) and 2016 (New Lands). It had absolutely gorgeous pixel art, and brilliant minimalistic controls that earned it a nomination for Excellence in Design at the Independent Games Festival in 2016 (it was also honorably mentioned for Visual Art and Audio). Simply: the game is great and I spared no love telling you all about it in my article The fall and rise of Kingdom.
The new content arrived this week and it came in the form of free DLC called Kingdom: New Lands - Skull Island. If you want no spoilers, stop reading and just go play it. It’s free. It doesn’t hurt. If you want full-on spoilers, you can read my Steam post I wrote after I finished it earlier today. For the rest, I’ll sum it up like this: either Raw Fury hyped it up to much calling it “challenging AF. Yeah, that's right, capital A F. Fuuuuuuuuuuuu.” or I’m just too good at this game by now. I’m not saying this to brag (OK, a bit), but mostly as a disclaimer why it was just meh. I turned Kingdom inside-out 3 times already—4 times including this playthrough—with 100h+ total playtime and 100% all achievements in all versions. I built my own hopes too big since I would genuinely love a challenge and the announcement sounded like I might just get it. I didn’t. It just makes the game 10% longer to finish without getting any new content. Even the damned hourglass statue didn’t have any effect because I beat the game before it could get even close to running out.
So nothing really changes. We’re back to square one, waiting patiently for Two Crowns—the next big release in the Kingdom lineage, coming in 2018.
If you aren’t on the band wagon yet, Kingdom: New Lands is available on pretty much every platform by now (mobile too), with the addition of PS4 coming soon on January 16. It’s a beautiful, atmospheric game that I love so much even this DLC couldn’t really make me disappointed. I just have to wait more. Looks like time isn’t on my side after all.