Kingdoms of GridWorld Demo

There are only so many ways you can innovate in certain aspects, but we have a long way to go until we can say that it’s only natural to run out of ideas. The video games industry is thriving at the moment, even if there are so many clones and remakes on the market right now. Every once in awhile, on the other hand, new ideas come to life and try to change everything.

Kingdoms of GridWorld is a turn-based strategy game with a unique set of gameplay mechanics, although it may seem a bit childish at first. In essence, you have to conquer tiles and harvest the resources that are available on them. You are rewarded with gold for your efforts, gold that can be used in a variety of ways to improve your kingdom, or just enlarge your army.

Speaking of which, there are multiple kingdoms to choose from, depending on your style. Humans, robots, dragons and orcs are just some of the possible choices, and each kingdom has unique skills and abilities that come in handy on the battlefield. Some are jack-of-all-trades, while others are built with a certain strategy in mind. It all depends on how you like to play, and it takes a while to learn the mechanics anyway.

Each time you level up, you are also awarded upgrade points, which can be used to unlock more powerful units, as well as increase the stats of your kingdom's base. These units have three characteristics you have to keep an eye on, such as attack, defense and hitpoints. You can also see these numbers on your enemy, so it’s never a gamble if you decide to attack.

Speaking of which, you can only attack manually in special circumstances, because otherwise the units attack only once at the end of the turn. This may seem boring and annoying, but it forces you to pay more attention to the positioning of your troops. You can move around the map by harvesting tiles, so even your kingdom can change location if you really need to get away from danger.

In the end, Kingdoms of GridWorld may sound like a great idea, but there’s much work left to be done for this to become something playable. For now, there is just too little content to be able to say whether this can become more than just a game you’ll play once and forget about it. Still, there are many good ideas that are worth pursuing, so we can only hope that the developers keep at it.

Note: If you want to support the developers and help them make the game a reality, you can donate for the project on the official Kickstarter page.