Ruined Kingdom is an interesting indie game in a series of wave-pushing/defending games, and overall, this one is not too bad.
So, the gameplay acts as a wave-pushing conflict with an oddly puzzle-like feel to it. Each level you are allowed to pick a handful of units and upgrades, you then use these units and the buffs you have given them to push through your enemies either to conquer a lane or to kill an enemy leader. What ended up happening was that I would pick some units, try them out, and if I failed, I would go back and adjust to see if I could get it the next run. This sort of build-a-setup, try it, fail/win, rinse-and-repeat style gameplay kind of feels like a puzzle where you are trying to find the right combination of units and upgrades with good timing and placement to solve the “puzzle” that the enemies provide. This mixes with a strategy game that does at times require thinking on your feet (when fighting rogue orcs or bosses) and an understanding of unit counters, positions, and spawn timings. I can’t say that I have ever played a puzzle strategy game like this, but it is surprisingly fulfilling and engaging. I have never seen anything quite like it and compared to the defensive gameplay of the first game I find this far more engaging and pretty fun. Is it many hours’ worth of fun… eh? It didn’t really grip me personally, but I can actually see people enjoying this quite a bit and I am sure someone will enjoy the gameplay. Yeah, it all kind of feels like a flash game, but honestly that is not bad, it makes me nostalgic, and sometimes simple is good. Not every game needs to have a depth and nuance that requires PhDs to enjoy. It is not the best game in the world by any means though and I do have plenty of criticisms. I feel that the unit balancing is off, I would have liked to see more upgrade options and upgrades, the way that gold is handled in this game makes it feel restrictive (which can be frustrating at times), I had an issue that soft locked me (in a 3 lane only match I lost one of the lanes and when that happened I could no longer spawn there so despite taking the other two I could not push it which is a huge oversight), you should be able to choose lanes with WASD or the arrow keys and spawn units with either assignable hotkeys or barring that the number keys, difficulty options would make the game more accessible and offer different paths for achievements and make the “puzzles” essentially doubled or tripled depending on the levels of difficulty added making the game larger in a sense, I would like to see more in depths stats of units and the upgrades so I understand them better, and the game is a bit clunky. However, my greatest criticism of the gameplay is that it is never explained very well, the tutorial is barely existent, and at times it would have been nice to get some guidance on issues like these: I didn’t know I could click on gold to pick it up until like level 15 or so, I don’t completely know what the whipping buff does, how does poison work, how does armor work, etc. I don’t mind figuring things out, but I kind of don’t feel like I know what I am doing and that is far less fun. That is a lot of criticism I must say, I still had some fun and that was what really matters.
The first game had quite a bit of story (nothing special), but this game pretty much lacks it completely, so if you haven’t played other games in the series, you will have minimal context to what is going on. This is a notable step back but didn’t bother me. If you are playing for story though you will be disappointed.
The sound design is okay. The sound effects are fine and the music is quite fitting, but neither excelled in a way that left any impact and they are both really limited. The voice acting was minimal and nothing special either, it was kind of odd how it just kind of appeared at times so that was interesting. I also noticed the menu lacked music which feels off. The sound design is pretty meh, but it is not bad either.
I praised it before and I will praise it again, the hand-drawn and animated art has a wonderful charm to it and I think it is pretty great. Yes, many of the assets are from the previous games so that is creating some repetitiveness, but it isn’t flipped Unity assets and the dev team is small so I will give it a pass. With that said, the menus and UI sometimes feel off from everything else. The thing that sticks out to me the most though is the usage of (at least) two fonts. There is one that is pretty close to Times New Roman or another font similar to it and then a different font that is similar to Impact. Please create consistency it looks way better, and the Impact-like one is not thematically fitting so it should be on the chopping block. Plus, sometimes the font is stretched and it looks weird. Passable for sure and it does add to that flash game feel but sadly not in a good way. The whole font thing makes the game feel sloppy, but I do feel like the rest of the art makes up for it.
Though unusual in my reviews I also want to take a moment to praise the devs of this game. I was given a review copy of the first in this series (Legacy of Sin the Father Sacrifice) and gave it a pretty negative review. Nonetheless, I was given this game to review which says a lot about the developer. It is clear that they take criticism and want to improve. I am quite pleased and I must say that this game shows that progress is being made to make each game better.
It is hard for me to decide what to give games like this on one hand there are plenty of flaws, and on another, there is tons of potential growth and passion in the project. But in the end, it really does come down to a simple question, did I have fun? Yeah, yeah, I did. It was something novel to play and I found myself being caught in it for a bit. The time I spent was minimal, but a lot of that comes down to just my available personal time in general and the fact that it was not so fun that I was willing to put in the time needed to finish it, but somebody is going to love this. I am so glad to see the devs making progress, I think this formula works better than the defensive-style games you have already made; however, I took a look at your next project and it looks to be your most ambitious one yet, so perhaps there are some changes on the horizon that will shake everything up.
To sum it all up, Ruined Kingdom is a rough game, but it has charm, passion, and a gameplay formula that is unique and surprisingly fun. I think it is well worth buying and trying, you may not complete it or get all the hours of fun you would want for a game of this price, but it is unique enough that I think it is worth a shot to support this indie dev.
