You are a king. You want to grow potatoes. You do not have enough land. Time for war. That is the plot for this easy to learn but challenging to master real-time strategy(RTS) game. So, get FIGHTING!

Release Date

October 2007.

Pros

Kingmania is very easy to learn with the first mission being an interactive tutorial as well. The game itself is very simple to play, but as you progress, the levels get more challenging.

The graphics are cartoony and quite good. Not state of the art but still good.

It is DRM free.

Cons

You cannot scroll the camera. You can only turn left/right, up/down and zoom in and out. Although the maps are small, sometimes it is just difficult to see everything when you cannot scroll.

There are no shortcut keys for anything in the game. You must use the mouse for everything.

Variety is a bit lacking. There are no different sides. There are only 2 unit types, and a hand full of buildings. The game is fun to play for several minutes at a time but does get repetitive because of the lack of variety. Although I do not play the game for hours, I do return to the game every couple of days.

Looking at the number of levels and the short time it takes to win(or lose) each level, it looks like the single player campaign of Kingmania is quite short compared to other RTS games.

Other Points

The sounds and music are fitting to the game.

This is one of those rare games where I get to set the graphics to full.

Kingmania is definitely a real-time strategy game but it plays nothing like the traditional C&C type RTS. You don’t build buildings. You don’t build units. Units and resources grow over time from different buildings you own. With your troops you can capture other buildings on the map. With your resources you can purchase upgrades for your buildings. Some buildings also have special abilities. You cannot control your units except in telling them where to go fight. The overall strategy of Kingmania is deciding where to attack and what to upgrade.

It is probably best to start playing the game on hard difficulty as the hard difficulty setting feels like normal difficulty of other RTS games.

Biases

Reviewed version Kingmania + North Kingdom v1.5.

I really liked Star Wars Empire at War, Act of War, Dune 2, Command And Conquer, C&C Tiberian Sun, C&C3 Tiberium Wars, Rise Of Nations and The Moon Project.

I also liked Empire Earth 2, Dark Reign, Warcraft 1 and 2, Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation.

I did not like Homeworld and Styrateg.

There is a multiplayer component but I only played the single player campaign.

I have not completed the campaign.

DRM

Kingmania is DRM free.

Minimum Requirements (from official website)

PC: XP/Vista 1.2GHz, videocard 64MB, OpenGL recomended.

Computer Played On

Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz
2Gb RAM
ATI Radeon X1600 256Mb RAM
Win XP Pro
Graphics settings are set to whatever I feel comfortable with playing on this PC. They are usually not set to the highest settings. All screenshots are taken with my settings.

Handy Tips

If you change the graphics setting from Direct3D to OpenGL and the game keeps crashing on startup, run the game with “-d3d” to force the game to start in Direct3D.