👑 Kingdom.so Overview
Kingdom is a relatively new Web "2.5" farming sim game. I covered its origin story a few months ago.
I say "2.5" because right now the crypto element is being able to purchase in-game currency with ETH or MATIC. You can also withdraw, but there is a fee to limit siphoning, plus the economy has yet to spin up in a way that would make it worth withdrawing (more on this below).
The premise: 2D hexagon tiled open world. Click into hexes to enjoy some Stardew Valley / Sunflower Land inspired farm simming. Below is the map view of the new 'capital' area, plus a zoomed version of the wider world:
🍄 Major new features
Over the past few months, the devs have added many more things to do!
- 💗 Energy system. Many things now cost energy, which can be replenished by eating food items. Gone are the days of endless scavanging!
- 👩🌾 Farming is perhaps the most game-loopy new piece. Plant objects can be broken down into seeds (costs 3 energy currently). Seeds go on soil, and plants automatically grow after a while.
- 🛠️ Crafting basics are here. The game uses recipe objects—once you possess the recipe you can craft the item at a workbench. Lots of UX/UI stuff to sort out, but the foundation is laid!
- 🍄 Loads of new items. During August and September, special mushroom items spawned in forest tiles. With the new planting/farming release, we now have cucumbers, tomatoes, ferns, and potatoes. Crafting has given us initial recipes for flags, boxes, planters, pathways, scarecrows (gives a growth buff), etc.
- 👚 Sprite customizations. A minor cosmetic feature: there are 6 or maybe 8 sprites to choose from. Many more choices will likely be a thing in the future.
Here's a few pictures of me on my tiles:
🐛 Bugs and cautions
This is still a very early release, and the team is targeting a bigger marketing push for 2023. There are still many glitches and goofs to iron out. Many fairly obvious quality of life things need to be implemented too. Don't join this game expecting to dive into a complete gaming experience!
Also, if you're a pure 'ROI' web3 gamer, this one probably isn't ready for you yet (unless you like speculating—e.g. the price of wood in game is likely going to rise). There is no loop mechanism yet for a two-sided market. As in: there is no deep incentive to buy anything yet, but everyone's selling. At times, the dev team will buy up random crops to help stimulate/reward people grinding away. But we are still a ways away from a sustainable two sided market IMO.
🤔 Early game strategy/costs
If you do want to check it out, you have two progression options: free-2-play (grind) or pay-2-get-set-up.
The early game is characterized by owning your first tile (a kingdom). Those without tiles can really only wander the land, scavenging items and hoping someone with a dropbox wants to buy them.
The most basic tile costs 300 gold.
300 gold is currently pegged to 0.0086 ETH or 11.7 MATIC—if that's worth it for you, then "skip" the grinding line and grab a tile! This gives you 32 interior tile spots to place items, etc.
However, the true tile economy comes from having at least a few trees to cut. Wood will become a bedrock of the economy, so owning some trees is the true path to participating in the economy. And the "small forest" tiles start at 1,200 gold. 😬
My hope is that more social gaming elements get added, whereby more established players can lend or rent space for way less than 300 gold—and that scavenging for items becomes a more rewarding enterprise for early game players.
This kind of stuff is actively discussed in the Kingdom Discord and the devs are keenly aware of the need to prioritize fun over designing yet another crypto profit engine.
📃 Whitepaper and what's to come
The devs of course have big plans, but they're a small scrappy team. So updates are slow and steady.
You can read the alpha whitepaper here. It's not much, and an updated version is planned within a few weeks. In fact, I will be helping them with editing and phrasing!
Things that have definitely been hinted at or confirmed:
- Tiles as NFTs. Not sure how it's going to work, but the whitepaper suggests it'll be on a voluntary basis? Hm. They've this set up right now: https://opensea.io/collection/kingdom-tiles
- SDK for custom items. A concept to allow more than just the dev team to create or propose in-game items
- Housing objects that you can enter/exit/upgrade (this is practically confirmed)
- Smoother navigation between tiles
- Events with special/rare item spawns
- Tile buffs and upgrades
- Traversable mountain tiles (presale actually just stealthy started for them!)
🔗 Relevant links (+ referral)
- If you're interested in poking around, here's my referral link!
- The Discord is here
- The straight up no-referral link site is here
