The Keys to the Kingdom are Cards | Kingdom’s Deck Review

A card-based kingdom builder. Build up the kingdom during the day and defend the lands during the night

A brand new card-based game is out and has you building up a kingdom and defending it from the evil enemy hordes who attack at night. Kingdom’s Deck puts every aspect of the kingdom in your hands. From where each house goes, to if the kingdom gains another villager or swordsman, you can pick and choose every single thing.

Resources

Each day, you will get a handful of choices. Two cards will appear, and you can make a choice on which one you would like to pick. Pick a house and make sure that you have enough housing for all the residents in the kingdom. People need to eat, so ensure you have farm land and enough villagers to tend them. You need resources so you can continue to take in new structures. Each resource card that you select will cost something. It is listed in the upper left corner of the card and will be one of the three basic materials (gold, wood, or stone). Since materials are a common need, place some trees and gold ore for villagers to collect.

Since people are seen as a resource, you need to collect villagers and protectors (swordmen and bowmen). The goal is to make sure there is enough housing for everyone, enough workers to tend to all the fields and material resources, plus you will need to build up a small army to defend the land at night.

You need to protect your kingdom, so help your soldiers by setting up some defense. Wall resources are incredibly important, they allow you to put up a section of fencing to delay incoming attacks. Help out your fighters with towers. You can place towers on the edge of your land, and they will snipe enemies once they get in range. The last thing that you can do to help out is build up spells. Spell cards will pop up in the resource cards, and once you get three of them, you will have access to spells to use in battle. Each spell has a unique attack with a cooldown, so utilize them well.

Gameplay

Take the day to set up your land. There is a day and night timer, so use this time wisely. Any villagers assigned to a task will work throughout the day and go into the houses at night. Once night hits, you will see how many enemies will attack throughout the night. There will also be black holes where the enemies will spawn in, and the number of spawns from each portal.

Once the night attacks begin, direct your soldiers to the enemy hordes, and the soldiers will attack whoever is in their range. You can divide and conquer or attack one horde with all your forces. Utilize all your resources in order to defend your lands because if enemies break through, they will begin to demolish your structures. This is not a major loss, but it will affect production the next day. The morning after each battle, a builder will roam around the lands fixing all the damaged resources. This means you don’t have to re-buy anything, but it will take time before something can be used again.

One resource that is important for defending is swordsmen and bowmen. There are cards that give boosts, and I highly recommend getting them every time they show up. You can resurrect fallen men, you can train swordmen and bowmen, you can turn villagers into soldiers; there are many options to help buff your army.

Modes

There are three different modes for each kingdom.

Journey is for those who want to go through the story of the kingdom, and might not want to focus on defending. All enemies have less health, your soldiers have more defense, and all materials (walls, towers, buildings) are stronger. This is a less stressful mode (and the one I was on for most of my playtime) and is more focused on the building aspects.

Standard is the middle ground. Try and find a balance between growing the kingdom and investing in resources, and building up your army.

Conqueror is the army-focused mode. Make sure that you have enough soldiers to defend your lands. This mode is direct to those who want to fight and destroy the enemies flooding your kingdom.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed this game! At first, I didn’t understand how to balance, and I was either leaning too far into building up my lands or too far into building up my army. It took some tries and attempting different styles of development until I found something that worked for me. I personally enjoyed the Journey mode best because I love city building, so being able to focus more on optimizing my town. I think anyone who enjoys city-building games would enjoy Kingdom’s Deck. I give this game a solid 4 out of 5 stars!