Developer: Fury Studios
Platform: PC
Genre: Action, Strategy
Publisher: Raw Fury
You may have heard of Kingdom: New Lands and Kingdom: Two Crowns. Well, now there’s a new game in the Kingdom series, and that game is called Kingdom Eighties! Kingdom Eighties is a 2D side-scrolling strategy game developed by Fury Studios and published by Raw Fury. This review was done for the PC, but the game will be available for Switch, Playstation and Xbox later this year.
Kingdom Eighties is a single-player game. The game plays extremely; similar to the other Kingdom games, except the theme and some gameplay mechanics differ. Unlike Two Crowns, there is no cooperative play, which could be something that the developers add later on. You start off with this thrilling cutscene that sets up the journey you are about to embark on. You play as this teenager who lives in the 80s and is trying to save their town. You ended up in the town because there are monsters in your town, and everything is being destroyed and turning purple. So you and your friends go explore through; town and many different locations to figure out what’s happening and what’s needed to stop this invasion. As night falls, greedy creatures come out to steal your coins and crown, and once the crown is obtained by the pesky creatures, the kingdom has fallen. So it’s important to recruit, hunt, and upgrade your kingdom. You can also explore the town, where you will find loot, structures, mounts, and more to help you sustain your kingdom.
Kingdom Eighties has six episodes. Each episode differs from the other. The gameplay style is the same, you establish your ‘kingdom’, or in the case of the episodes, it could be a summer camp, high school setting or others. As you go through the episodes, they each differ in both size and difficulty, and they only get harder; as you go on. You will encounter new and stronger creatures that will try to steal your crown. For you; to move on to the next episode of the story, you need to destroy the giant portals. Once you have completed the tasks at the first; location: you can progress onward with the story.
In episode one, you are at a summer camp. You meet these two characters that help you on your mission. A girl that repairs the trash can shield for when breaking portals, and a guy who uses a huge dumpster as a shield. The mounts you start off on are all bikes, which is where the Stranger Things resemblance comes in. At the summer camp, you recruit kids; who do chores that give you money to train them into builders and archers to help defend your base. The first episode is easy enough to do, there; is not much building that needs to be done. To leave the summer camp, you have; to defeat two big octopus Greeds and many small ones to pay three coins to get your cameo back from the dark world. After the first episode, you move on to the next, where you are at a Royal High School. As you go on throughout the episode, there are other cutscenes you can unlock, and this episode came with a specific character called Wiz. As you play through the episode, there is a lot more about the story you uncover, which we won’t relieve and let you play yourself, but the story does get interesting as; play through. This is just to give you an idea of how the episodes are unique to one another, which is really different from the other games because they always were the same thing on repeat but harder and with new mounts/upgrades.
The controls for Kingdom Eighties are simple and minimal. As the game is a side-scrolling game, meaning that you go from one side to the other, the only moving controls are moving to the left and right. You then have other controls like a sprint, drop, pay, mount special, and monarch special. Overall the controls work very smoothly.
The art style of this game, in my opinion, is alluring. Everything is; very minimalistic, but it works so well with its beautiful pixel art aesthetic. With this game specifically, everything is themed to be in the 80s and the game; really gives off a similar vibe to the popular Netflix show ‘Stranger Things’. It captures this spooky yet vibrant detail about the decade. Even the characters are detailed to look and fit into that decade. Even the characters are detailed to look and fit into that decade. For example, one of the friends that you meet on your journey is literally called ‘The Nerd’. The attention to detail put in this game is also incredible. The backgrounds for each episode were extremely; vibrant but also brought so much character to the game. Everything in the game looks so calm and wonderful. This game is hectic, but it’s hectic with elegance. Everything is so bright and colourful, and it really puts; you into the 80s. The game does a wonderful; job of capturing the essence of the decade. On top of that, the soundtrack and the sound effects are fitting too. I do have to say that the art style and sounds complement one another to create such a lovely atmosphere. Sound effects like the ping when the gold is used, the river running, and the chopping of the trees really help the player feel like they are actually in the game. The aesthetic of this game is beyond; wonderful and so pleasing to look at and play with. The aesthetic of this game is beyond wonderful and so pleasing to look at and play with.
What I like about this Kingdom game is that it is focused; on a story, and the story, is told through the cutscenes, objectives and people you meet throughout the game. The cutscenes were really different and held up the story so well; it seemed like an animated series in those moments. Even when you unlocked or encountered the different characters, there would be a specific cutscene to help set up their story, which; was done really well. What was really annoying about the game was that when you lost your crown, an option would show up saying to restart.
I found it really annoying how you can’t just restart from the episode you are at but rather restart the entire game. Also, the game has slight bugs here and there which; interfere with the experience. I finished the game in about 7 hours. I won’t lie; I do wish the game was longer. I like how you always have two other characters to help you with your mission, and each character differs from the other. There’s also a really cute; animation where when you stop riding your mount, you start drinking water.
Kingdom Eighties is an extremely enjoyable, pleasant strategic game that has a great, story-driven appeal with an exciting decade theme; around the game. The game gives a wondrous experience, which dives into a journey where you meet people and try to save your town from the Greed! If this is a game that sounds good to your liking, then definitely, go check out Kingdom Eighties!
Overall: 10/10
This is S & S. We are world game explorers. We play games. We have played over 10,000+ games! We travel, we write reviews AND we play more games!!!!
