Note: This review will appear a lot like my review for "Legacy of Sin the father sacrifice" and "Legacy of Sin blood oath". The rationale is that when developers copy + paste [i]entire games[/i], I don't think people should be offended if the review looks a little bit similar, too.
Ruined Kingdom is an almost 1:1 copy + paste of "Legacy of Sin the father sacrifice" and "Legacy of Sin blood oath", both simplistic 2D retro soldier defense games. You have a hero who you can position along two lanes (even Plants vs Zombies had more lanes than this!) and you can spend gold coins on a number of obstacles to slow down the inevitable waves of enemies your hero has to hack up. This differs from the "Legacy" games because you're the attacker, but that's it. It's the same game. It even has the same assets!!!!
Okay, straightforward game, nothing new here... except... the developer seems to have accidentally hired some artists instead of going down the 2D retro pixel avenue that amateur developers love so much (because it requires no talent or money to create). The combat animations and 2D characters in this game look great. Easily the equivalent of the artwork you see in graphic novels from DC or Marvel. The problem is that the same assets are used in the games... basically asset flipping, but at home. I say, it's still an asset flip if you're flipping your own assets.
But the game itself... makes Flappy Bird look like a masterpiece in game design. It's garbage. This game is like someone put a Hugo Boss tuxedo on an unshaven toothless hobo. I kinda feel bad for the artists.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
This looks and feels like a mobile app, but it doesn't seem to have made it to the app stores. It's unclear why this was put on Steam instead of the app stores it seems to have been designed for. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all).
Regardless, for all intents and purposes "Ruined Kingdom" might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Ruined Kingdom didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for "defeating the result", trivial to get, but less than 29 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game.
The poor quality of this game is also reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 4 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"Ruined Kingdom" has the gamer gouging, sheer lunatic minded price of $15 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $20 asking price for this game could get you games like "Alien: Isolation", "Lethal Company" or "7 Days to Die". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. FIFTEEN BUCKS!!!! What a joke! Did I mention they just copy + pasted entire other games to make this trash?
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
