King Machine Demo

Freedom is a very desirable concept in video games nowadays, because people are much less inclined to deal with scripted events and linear level design. However, not every genre is that easy to approach in this regard, because an open world is not a universal solution. Thus, it can be tricky to integrate sandbox elements in platformers or shooters.

King Machine is an exploration/sandbox game with platformer elements, in which your goal is to explore an abandoned factory and try to make it work again by rebuilding the machinery inside. Thus, you have to explore each part of the factory and check up on the components scattered all over the place, as well as create new ones by copying the designs you stumble upon.

As such, the exploration bit can be quite challenging sometimes, because the levels are tricky to navigate. On top of that you also have to handle objects in 3D, which is very difficult to do in the beginning, mainly because the controls are very annoying and badly implemented. Thus, whether you have to rotate or move a block around, it always takes way too long to do so.

The game also forgets to explain things to you, even if there is a short tutorial to guide you in the beginning. It’s a very vague and not very helpful tutorial, on the other hand, not to mention the fact that it skips a few important things. Your character can grab, use, create or destroy objects, so it’s important to know when are these actions possible. Moreover, the character movement is glitchy as well, since you always find yourself falling or hitting things.

Each block you stumble upon can be picked up and copied, which allows you to recreate it when you need it later on. Using these blocks you can start to rebuild machinery around the factory, which is actually the whole goal. The graphics are not very pretty, given the fact that the technology used is quite old, and the level design is lazy as well.

In the end, King Machine is not yet in the in a very polished state, because it’s way too annoying to control the blocks you have to work with. Thus, it needs more work before you can have fun with it, given the fact that it feels more like a rough 3D modeling program than a video game at this point.