King under the Mountain Demo

Building an empire is hard no matter how you look at it, whether it’s in the real world or in a video game. It’s even more difficult if you start from scratch, because it’s not easy to get people to work together toward the same goal. Other annoyances become apparent later on, such as gathering the necessary resources and watching out for possible enemies.

King under the Mountain is a top-down sandbox game that features randomly-generated maps, multiple races and a somewhat simple set of gameplay mechanics. The goal is to build a settlement and gather everything you need in order to keep the people happy and expand your borders. Unfortunately, the gameplay is a bit too simple at this point, but then again this is a very early version of the game.

As such, your job is to create special zones and watch the settlers get to work by chopping trees or mining the mountains. These zones are displayed as colorful outlines only, on the other hand, which kind of takes the fun out of the building aspect. At this point, your settlement does not look very impressive at all, regardless of how many people it has or how big it is, which quite disappointing.

The list of promised features is long and exciting, however, including things like like character customization, crafting and multiple races that are part of the same universe. On top of that, it should also be possible to gather a party and go on adventure if you feel like it, which adds an RPG feel to the whole thing. Granted, none of this is possible in the demo at hand, so you should curb your enthusiasm at the moment.

Lastly, the graphics are nothing to write home about, and it’s actually difficult to figure out which tile is what in the beginning. Although the visual component is not very important in a game such as this one, more variety in the environment would be great. The characters are also kind of repetitive and simple, but this can be overlooked if the gameplay itself is decent.

When it’s all said and done, King under the Mountain might just make a good impression if every feature is properly implemented, but so far it’s a bit too simple and repetitive. Hence, you can help the developers realize their ideas by participating in the game’s Kickstarter campaign.