My Island Kingdom

Kingdoms are a thing of the past nowadays, especially since it really doesn’t make any sense to build castles or fortifications, given the power of our current war technology. However, a few centuries ago you could practically laugh in the face of an invasion if you had a couple of sturdy bricks protecting your city. Walls were by no means impossible to penetrate, but they took planning and time to be brought down.

My Island Kingdom is a time management game in which you have to work as efficiently as possible and try to think ahead, otherwise your entire round could go to waste. In essence, the gameplay mechanics are more or less the same as in every other time management game out there, except in this one you have to do everything in a set number of moves. This adds a nice layer of difficulty on top of a pretty old formula.

Story-wise, there’s nothing to get excited about, but the plot is interesting enough to keep you interested for the duration of the game. Hence, you play the role of a man trying to rebuild a kingdom and reclaim it for his king, which is obviously quite the overwhelming task. In order to rebuild facilities and repair buildings you require resources, which also need to be gathered as efficiently as possible.

Each time your character performs an action, a move is subtracted from the total. This makes the experience very similar to that of a TBS, but it’s not very complex either. It’s quite easy to manage your moves in the beginning, but it gets trickier and trickier once you advance through the stages. In fact, the later levels require you to do some real thinking before making any kind of decision.

As far as the technical side is concerned, the game’s graphics are very cartoony and static, which is a bit disappointing in this day and age. Granted, the visual quality does not really have an impact on the gameplay, but it would be nice to see something better either way. Thankfully, at least the interface and the controls are responsive, although you only have to use the mouse to get around the map.

Even if it’s not the best looking time management game out there, My Island Kingdom is certainly tricky, especially if you are not used to move limits. Hence, if you are up for a challenge, this could certainly steal a few afternoons from you.