9 Kings Early Access review: Blood for the Blood King

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From the breathtaking grandeur of Songs of Silence to the tactical mastery of Mechabellum, we find ourselves in a resplendent era for auto-battlers – an era that’s set to shine even more brightly with the advent of Nine Kings.

A developer named Sad Socket combined automatic combat, features from deck-building games in the roguelike style, and city construction elements to devise a seemingly straightforward yet profoundly complex system. At the start of each run, you’re given nine vacant plots where you initially place your primary structure. The rest unfolds based on your card draws, as every building, troops, and town upgrades are card-represented. You can somewhat influence your opening hand by earning perks through leveling up, but 9 Kings primarily requires quick thinking and adaptability – you have to make the best of whatever the game presents to you.

In this game, each turn, or year, concludes with an attack on you by another king or rebel within your same group. You don’t control your troops in battles, except for one instance; they automatically assemble and fight based on their pre-programmed targeting priorities and actions. After every battle, you are given the opportunity to select one card from the spoils of war, and this card will originate from the faction you recently fought against. This means that you need to combine your enemies’ tools with your own in order to defeat them.

At specific instances, you’ll have the chance to engage in war or make peace with one of your competitors, which can provide access to resources while also removing them depending on your requirements. However, it’s essential to manage your resource demands with other factors: Certain rulers are exceptionally skilled at thwarting a particular strategy, and these instances offer an excellent chance to eliminate a problematic rival.

Effectively organizing your card pool is crucial because simply scattering cards around your town haphazardly for an extended period won’t yield positive results. Strategically arranging your city for optimal card usage is the core gameplay mechanic, often referred to as a build tailored to your current run in roguelike games.

It’s important to note that each card possesses unique effects. Some cards offer adjacency bonuses, enhancing the stats of neighboring units or towers. Others affect the entire city. Certain cards consume troops on a turn-by-turn basis to activate specific effects. Troops themselves can even interact uniquely when placed alongside other units.

When deployed alone, the Nature King’s boars attack using melee combat. However, when positioned alongside another unit, this other unit can ride the boars in battle, which increases their speed and grants them extra damage proportional to the boars’ maximum health.

These effects can significantly alter your units. For instance, your slow, heavily armored paladins could become swift damage dealers when partnered with boars; you might even call them “boarlistas.” On the other hand, your agile thieves, who excel in sneaking into enemy backlines to cause chaos before meeting their demise, could become surprisingly durable if given multiple layers of steel coats that nullify attacks. Moreover, your sturdy defenders might be converted into mobile bombs by arming them with the carnage ability. Upon their death, these units explode, dealing damage proportional to their maximum health.

Exploring the limitless possibilities and harmonious interactions among various monarchs is an intriguing endeavor. Contrary to expectation, having insight into opponents’ strategies through their cards doesn’t seem to create monotony in the gameplay for me.

It’s clear that each monarch begins with distinct advantages, shaping your strategy from the get-go and even more so when abilities come into play, enabling you to set up certain buildings in your town before the game starts. However, what truly sets them apart is that each king’s primary structure grants a unique ability.

In a more straightforward manner: The “Nature’s King” possesses a healing ability that affects a certain area, which prompts a focus on Health Points (HP). Conversely, the “Stone’s King” sets up towers during battle, encouraging strategies to boost tower damage and prolonging combat duration.

During each playthrough, you might encounter identical cards, but the ones beneficial to you and the combinations you aim for will vary greatly based on the king you’ve selected. In Early Access, there are seven kings to choose from: The King of Nothing, The King of Magic, The King of Greed, The King of Blood, The King of Stone, The King of Nature, and The King of Progress. Three more kings are planned for addition as we approach the full release, providing a significant increase in potential combinations.

9 Kings excels at portraying a specific fantasy and gameplay style for each of its kings. For instance, consider the King of Blood, who embodies elements typical of both demons and necromancy. You can construct demon altars that generate a small number of elite units throughout the run, with these units growing stronger as more of your own units perish. To maximize this synergy, pair them with units that have a large troop count and are easily defeated, such as imps or bombers. Interestingly, if you position your imps and bombers near a cemetery, they will reincarnate as imps, allowing them to spill blood again and boost your demons’ power a second time. As the game progresses, the visual representations of your demons expand until they dominate half your army, consuming entire enemy armies in the process. Essentially, they become larger and more substantial, or as we say, they get “chonky.

During your gameplay, random advantages are bestowed upon your town’s tiles, stray traders roam, and continuous growth ensures more choices throughout your journey. At specific points, you get to pick from a selection of boosts, which can supercharge your campaign. As the Monarch of Blood, I once received a bonus that turned buildings’ summoned units into bombers instead of imps, enabling my cemetery and a tower I seized from the King of Progress – typically transforming adversaries into lab rats – to generate explosive troops right among my enemies’ forces. Long live the Blood King!

The Pixelated Socket is skillful at creating an immersive experience through its artistic representations, for instance, it enlarges units and superimposes damage figures everywhere to symbolize the chaos. Although they are basic, these visuals effectively convey individuality for each faction and deliver important details, such as depicting unit enhancements visually.

Although it’s generally alright, there comes a time when dealing with numerous units and excessive damage that resembles a snowstorm, identifying anything becomes challenging for the King of Greed. This is troublesome because his power enables him to instantly eliminate any unit, and collecting gold units marked in gold grants him additional funds – a necessity for most of his units and structures. At the onset, this is manageable, but eventually, it becomes difficult to locate the tagged units, rendering his ability seemingly underpowered and disappointing.

I’d appreciate a greater variety in the composition of enemy armies too. Right now, each ruler you encounter doesn’t have access to the same strategies or synergies as yours – they just field standard units from their own faction. It’s understandable for balance purposes, making them more predictable so we can strategize accordingly, but it would add an exciting element of surprise if they could occasionally catch us off guard and make us adapt quickly by thinking outside the box to counter them effectively.

Despite the game clearly indicating the damage inflicted by each unit and structure, it falls short in showing healing values, making it challenging to gauge the effectiveness of your healing abilities as the King of Nature. This is significant because one of your potential buffs transforms your healing power into a damaging field. However, with no insight into the importance or insignificance of my healing to my units, it’s hard to make informed decisions about that transformation. It seems like there might be a display issue, as the King of Magic’s healing spire does show the healing amount for each fight.

In essence, developers often need to address issues related to bugs as there are many that can unexpectedly halt a game session when they appear. The exception to this is the mother ship in The King of Progress, which players can actively control. One potential enhancement for it supposedly doubles the attack range; theoretically speaking. However, in reality, it renders the unit incapable of performing actions, effectively ending your game. Furthermore, there are towers that malfunction randomly, a problem I’ve encountered with both The King of Greed’s coin dispenser and The King of Stone’s flamethrower turret.

The issue is further complicated because the saved games appear to be malfunctioning. Each time I attempt to load a save, the game transports me to a turn prior to my designated save spot and drops me into a battle that cannot be fought or forfeited. Such glitches are common during Early Access stages like this one, so it’s not overly concerning at the moment.

What stands out most is that Sad Socket has effectively captured the essential elements that make gameplay enjoyable, captivating, and rewarding – I’ve found myself repeatedly wanting to play just one more round since gaining access, and I anticipate spending more time battling for the Blood King in the future.

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2025-05-21 17:17