The guys from AFA Interactive and Rising Star Games were kind enough to have Vooks around for an hour long preview of Little Kings story. Weve already had some hands-on time at eGames, which you can read here. They showed me even more of this charming...
Sketchy, chalky art welcomes you to the world and introduces you to ‘the boy’. He’s playing with finger puppets, all on his own because he doesn’t have many (any) friends. Some rats run past him and outside. ‘Hey, come back!’ he exclaims. Running after them he finds a crown inside a great big rock. The rock explodes and he puts the crown on. Howser the bull-knight rides up on his mighty bovine steed, kicking up dust and making an awful racket, and the story takes off from there. Your initial kingdom is pretty tiny. The grand castle you were promised turns out to be a shack. It does have a flag on top though.
You meet your advisors first off. Howser, who tells you what to do, Liam, your ‘Anything advisor’ and Verde, who acts a save point. Liam is your tutorials man. You don’t ever have to take his advice if you don’t want, but if you’re stuck on how to do something ask him a question and you’ll be treated to a chalk-board picture-by-picture explanation – just like at school! Your throne becomes your main interface before long – you can order new buildings, get reports on your kingdom, get quests, buy upgrades, all sorts of things.
I felt bad about the next part – your kingdom is full of carefree adults at first. They don’t have jobs, they look a lot like flower children, and they’re having a great time frolicking around. My first task was to motivate them into working for me. So I grabbed a few and went treasure hunting. After I’d got them to dig up enough treasure I cashed in at my castle and built a guardhouse. Howser told me to go to bed. The next morning my new building was sitting there, right and ready. I grabbed a few guards and went off to fight my first boss, Cow Bones.
A lot of the game is absurd in a very funny way. A lot of the bad guys and names of people are just silly and poke fun at games in general. An evil cow with a skull for a head makes for an engaging boss fight and made me giggle like a little girl. It’s often to the point of parody but in some great move in game design it fits perfectly within the world of Little King’s Story. I found myself laughing at quite a lot of the bosses and dialogue and the story. Cow Bones wasn’t too hard to defeat but good fun. He was at his weakest when his head came off. ‘I think most people are’ said one of the guys from AFA. True. With the money I got from defeating him I bought the farmhouse and got some farmers to break down another barrier for me so I could fight the next boss, Giant Frog. I fared pretty badly here and had to retreat after he’d eaten half of my troops.
We loaded up a save later in the game so I got a taste of the eventual grandness of my kingdom. When it faded into the throne room I got quite a shock. Gone was the shack, I was in the money now! A great golden throne, regal red carpets, multi-story castle. It was great. Not only this but my castle was now decked out with mini-games such as ping-pong (I didn’t have a chance to play) and the walls were covered in paintings I could pick and change as I wanted. I headed outside, and my kingdom looked basically finished. Huge walls surrounded my castle, there were buildings and people everywhere. Not only that, but I could command 26 people at once.
My entourage had grown considerably – and to make it easier to organise the game gives you a clever podium which lets you select teams of people at once – the Royal Guard, Battle Team, Builders, whatever you need, and summons them to your castle straight away. It makes it a lot easier to go out adventuring. Whilst my immediate Kingdom was finished, I’d gained control of a lot of new areas to build in and expand. There were also a lot of new and upgraded jobs for my citizens. Archers, wizards, stonemasons; apparently you’ll have over thirty professions by the end of the game.
The thing that impresses me most about Little King’s Story is the fluidity and overall organic feeling of the game and its gradual expansion. The learning curve seems to be perfect – the game introduces new elements and areas one by one so you’ll never feel overwhelmed. At first, how to move around, how to control your followers, how to use each class, basic combat, building. It all works up into what gradually becomes an incredibly grand scale.
When your initial entourage is five, you can eventually have fifty, moving in different formations and tackling more complex tasks. Where your kingdom starts as a tiny hamlet it will eventually grow into something massive and magnificent. It never felt overwhelming though. Not only that but the charm and personality that the game exudes make it stand out above the rest. It is made by some of the best though – Japanese developers that worked on Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, older Mario games, Harvest Moon, they teamed up into a sort of super group to make it.
The character and world design is brilliant and fits perfectly with the classical music that accompanies your adventure, the cut scenes and art are brilliantly crafted and quite beautiful. While the storybook aesthetic and intuitive game play will keep the kids enthralled, the humour, charm and scale will definitely engage any older players. Rising Star and AFA Interactive are aiming for an April 24th release in Australia. Vooks should have a review up soon, so keep an eye out! Thanks again to Rob and Ben for giving us their time.
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