Info about 9 Kings:

Official game description:
Build your city into the most powerful of all kingdoms through endless combinations of buildings, units, spells, and positioning. Take advantage of chaotic combos and powerful perks to break the game and become overpowered. Grow your kingdom in strategic ways, prepare for dozens of unique events, and show the world your kingdom can outlast all others.
From humble village to massive citadel, your capital recruits your units and grows their power. Expand your kingdom strategically over time and build it to survive decades of war and strife.
From sturdy knights and warlocks, to glass cannon wizards and bombers, to hordes of fiendish imps and sentient mushrooms, there are dozens of units to lead and fight. Stockpile gold to hire thousands of mercenaries to your cause, use dark magic to raise the dead, and harness nature itself to bring down your enemies!
Each of the 9 kings has a different starting deck of buildings, troops, and spells, but you can loot the rival kings who attack your lands to access cards from their unique decks. Make peace with those whose units don’t fit your playstyle, and declare war against kings with the powers and units you covet, deploying the tools acquired from your enemy to unlock countless combinations of stacking buffs and modifiers to build an invincible army.
Combine your cards in endless ways – try out insane builds and watch massive armies fight for your crown, survive as long as you can against increasingly powerful enemies, or break the game and watch all challengers crumble before you.

Release date: May 23, 2025

Categories: Roguelike, Tower Defense, Deckbuilding, Autobattler, Strategy, Base Building, Resource Management, Build Crafting


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Addictive, fun, and replayable gameplay (weight 0.97): The game is praised for its addictive gameplay loop, fun mechanics, and engaging content. Players enjoy experimenting with different strategies, discovering powerful combos, and breaking the game. Many reviewers mention the "just one more run" feeling, indicating high replayability and enjoyment.
- Unique genre mix, charming aesthetics (weight 0.89): The game is frequently described as a unique and enjoyable blend of genres, often combining roguelike, tower defense, deck-building, and autobattler elements. Reviewers appreciate the game's simple yet deep mechanics, strategic choices, and the satisfying feeling of progression. The charming pixel art style and engaging sound design further enhance the overall experience.
- Diverse Kings offer varied gameplay (weight 0.25): The variety of Kings significantly impacts gameplay, with each King offering unique abilities, playstyles, and strategic possibilities. Reviewers enjoy experimenting with different Kings, discovering new builds and synergies, and adapting their strategies to the King's strengths and weaknesses. This diversity adds depth and replayability to the game.
- Extensive build variety and customization (weight 0.11): The game offers a wide array of builds and playstyles, allowing players to experiment with different strategies and create overpowered combinations. Reviewers enjoy the flexibility and customization options, as well as the ability to test their builds in the endless mode. This build diversity contributes to the game's replayability and long-term engagement.
- Strong core concept, high potential (weight 0.1): The game has a strong core concept and a lot of potential, with reviewers praising its basic feel, flavor, and intuitive gameplay. The game excels at simplification, making it easy to get into and fun to play. The game's concept is great and has a lot of interesting ideas.
- Easy to learn, casual-friendly (weight 0.09): The game is designed to be accessible and easy to learn, making it suitable for casual players and beginners. Reviewers appreciate the intuitive mechanics, simple gameplay, and relaxing experience. The game also offers a high skill ceiling, providing depth and challenge for more experienced players.
- Strategic building and resource management (weight 0.07): The game's mechanics encourage strategic decision-making, particularly in building placement and resource management. Reviewers enjoy the synergies between different elements, the satisfying feeling of exponential growth, and the unique blend of genres. The limited space and card pool force players to make meaningful choices, adding depth and replayability to the game.
- Great for short play sessions (weight 0.05): The game is well-suited for short play sessions, making it easy to pick up and play during breaks or in between other activities. Reviewers appreciate the quick and repeatable gameplay, as well as the ability to play while listening to podcasts or watching videos. The game creates a "just one more" feeling, encouraging replayability.
- Unique and varied runs (weight 0.04): Each run in the game feels unique, with reviewers appreciating the quantity of unique units and the different ways to approach each playthrough. The runs are pleasantly short and enjoyable, encouraging repeated playthroughs. Meaningful choices are present in each run, adding depth and engagement to the gameplay experience.
- Hyperbolic claims of addiction (weight 0.04): The game is described as highly addictive, with some reviewers making hyperbolic comparisons to drug addiction. While the game may be engaging, these types of statements are not constructive and lack specific details about the gameplay experience. This point shows signs of review bombing.
- Active developer support, frequent updates (weight 0.04): The developer is actively supporting the game with frequent updates and patches, demonstrating a commitment to improving the player experience. Reviewers appreciate the high update frequency and the responsiveness of the development team. The game has become increasingly polished with each release, indicating a dedication to quality and continuous improvement.
- Full game exceeds demo experience (weight 0.03): The demo was highly enjoyable, leading to immediate purchases of the full game. The full game expands on the demo experience, offering significantly more content and improvements. The developers are credited for providing a freely available demo, which initially sparked interest in the game.

Common complaints:
- Frequent crashes and bugs (weight 0.81): The game is plagued by frequent crashes, bugs, and performance issues, especially in later stages or with specific builds. These issues can lead to lost progress, frustration, and an unplayable experience.  Many reviewers specifically mention crashes occurring with large numbers of units or high damage output.
- Unbalanced difficulty scaling (weight 0.59): The game's difficulty scaling is unbalanced, leading to either an experience that is too easy initially or spikes that are excessively difficult later on.  Many reviewers feel that success relies too heavily on luck and specific builds, limiting strategic options and player agency, especially on higher difficulties.
- Lacks content and replayability (weight 0.55): The game suffers from a lack of content, variety, and replayability.  Players desire more cards, kings, game modes, and events to keep the gameplay fresh and engaging.  The limited content leads to repetitiveness and a feeling of having experienced everything the game has to offer too quickly.
- Poor explanations and UI/UX (weight 0.4): The game lacks sufficient explanation of its mechanics and provides a clunky user experience.  Reviewers suggest more transparent tutorials, clearer card descriptions, and better UI/UX to improve player understanding and navigation.
- Grindy, slow progression system (weight 0.35): The game's progression system feels grindy and unrewarding, with slow leveling and limited perk options.  Many reviewers feel that the meta-progression system requires excessive grinding and doesn't significantly impact gameplay, making it feel like a chore.
- Late-game performance degradation (weight 0.28): The game suffers from performance issues, particularly in the late game, due to the number of units and calculations. This leads to lag, frame rate drops, and crashes, especially when unit stats scale to extremely high values, causing numerical overflows.
- Kings are unbalanced/lack variety (weight 0.22): Kings are unbalanced, with some being significantly weaker or less viable than others, especially on higher difficulties. The limited card pool per king restricts strategic diversity and replayability.
- Endless mode unbalanced/buggy (weight 0.21): Endless mode suffers from erratic difficulty spikes and balance issues.  Enemy stats scale too quickly, leading to an unmanageable experience and frequent crashes.
- Uninspired and frustrating experience (weight 0.11): The game is described as bland, frustrating, and uninspired, with poor sound design and graphics. These points are vague and subjective, lacking specific details about gameplay mechanics or features.
- Lacks strategic depth (weight 0.1): The game lacks strategic depth and meaningful choices, leading to repetitive gameplay. Runs often end quickly, preventing players from engaging with the game's mechanics.
- Damage is overpowered (weight 0.09): Damage is much more effective than tankiness, leading to very quick fights in the late game. At higher difficulties, only specific builds are viable, requiring luck to get the right elements in the right order.
- Minor bugs and glitches (weight 0.06): The game has minor bugs, visual glitches, and text display issues. These issues are not game-breaking but detract from the overall experience.
- Lacks clear information/statistics (weight 0.06): The game lacks sufficient statistics tracking and clear indicators for buffs and debuffs. It's often hard to tell what's going on in battles, hindering strategic decision-making.

Gameplay feedback:
- Unique blend of genres (weight 0.28): The core gameplay loop involves turn-based kingdom building on a grid, card drafting, and real-time auto-battles. Players strategically place cards representing units, buildings, and spells to defend against waves of enemies. The game uniquely blends deck-building, tower defense, and roguelike elements.
- RNG-heavy card draw system (weight 0.04): The game relies heavily on RNG card draws, which can lead to inconsistent runs. Players draw and play one card at a time, which some reviewers feel limits deckbuilding strategy.
- Multiple difficulties, endless mode (weight 0.03): The game features multiple difficulty levels and an optional endless mode. The endless mode allows players to test the strength of their builds. Turns are calculated in years.
- Buildings and decrees influence strength (weight 0.02): The strength of troops, buildings, and abilities is influenced by buildings and royal decrees. Scaling is primarily achieved through buildings that buff units at the end of each round. During each year of reign, options include shop purchases, royal decrees, and declaring war/peace with other kings.
- Acquire cards from defeated kings (weight 0.02): Beating enemy waves allows players to acquire cards from the defeated king's pool, influencing the player's build. Players need to actively choose which lords to attack to get their cards as drops after defeating them. Kings focus on different aspects of the fight and the board phase, creating varied experiences.
- Runs are relatively fast-paced (weight 0.01): Runs last 10-15 minutes with permanent unlocks via Crowns. Endless runs can last up to an hour. Runs are fairly fast paced when battle-speed is set to max, striking a good balance in length.
- Kings have unique focus/abilities (weight 0.01): The King of Nothing focuses on units and building buffs, the King of Stone emphasizes towers and buildings, and the King of Spells is about enchantments. Each king has a unique base with abilities that can be activated with a left click during combat.
- Perks provide flexibility/progression (weight 0.01): Perks can be chosen before runs to provide flexibility or guide the player down a specific path. The only way to progress is through perk unlocks with each king, gained through experience from runs. The player decides how many perk points they use.
- Combo creation and overpowered setups (weight 0.01): The game involves figuring out combos and creating overpowered setups. Players can combine their own and enemy technologies to create different effects. Interesting tableau/hand management combo where saving destruction cards for the late game can facilitate better combos.
- Gold used to purchase mercenaries (weight 0.01): Players can spend gold to purchase mercenaries. Players can refresh the shop if they don't like the cards available, provided they have enough gold. The reviewer acquired 10,000 gold and 12 plots of mercenaries.
- Poison and attack speed strategy (weight 0.01): The reviewer found that applying poison to units with a high number of attacks is the most effective strategy. The reviewer suggests combining the Nature faction (for poison and unit quantity) with the Void faction (for fast-attacking archers). The reviewer used a strategy of using a strong front-line unit, specifically the "法术之王" (Spell King) warlock, buffed with blacksmith and forest buildings to increase attack and health.

Performance notes:
- Bug fixes and active updates (weight 0.1): Some players report experiencing minor bugs, but the developers are actively addressing them with frequent updates and patches. Recent patches have improved game optimization and stability.
- Good performance on various hardware (weight 0.05): The game runs well on a variety of hardware, including the Steam Deck, Linux, integrated graphics, and low-end PCs. Some reviewers specifically praise the game's flawless performance on modest machines.
- Excessive stat values/calculations (weight 0.02): The game exhibits extremely high numerical values for stats like attack speed and damage, sometimes displaying incorrect values. These high values may contribute to performance issues.
- Low resource utilization (weight 0.01): The game client doesn't fully utilize available RAM and CPU power, which may contribute to performance bottlenecks.
- Match start and stutter issues (weight 0.01): The game sometimes gets stuck on the versus screen, failing to start the next match. Stuttering can also occur, creating the illusion of teleporting opponents.
- Crash recovery (weight 0.01): After a crash, the game returns the player to the turn immediately before the crash, minimizing progress loss.
- Mothership visibility obstruction (weight 0.01): The mothership can obstruct the view of the battlefield, especially when combat starts, suggesting a need for semi-transparency when not at the base.
- Imprecise volume control (weight 0.01): The volume control lacks precision, making it difficult to find a comfortable sound level.
- Screen tearing issue (weight 0.01): Some players have to manually force vertical synchronization through their Nvidia control panel to eliminate screen tearing.
- Game speed affects outcomes (weight 0.01): Changing the game speed can alter gameplay outcomes, indicating a potential bug in how game logic is processed at different speeds.
- Unclear bonus calculations (weight 0.01): The game lacks clear explanations of how different bonuses are calculated, whether additively or multiplicatively.
- Loud initial music volume (weight 0.01): The music is too loud when the game starts, requiring manual adjustment.
- Unexplained unit disappearances (weight 0.01): Units sometimes experience unexplained health drops and disappearances after a short lag, suggesting a potential bug or issue with unit tracking.
- Unclear Quarry scaling (weight 0.01): The Quarry 2% scaling effect doesn't always seem to work as expected, or its effects are not clearly communicated to the player.

Recommendations:
- Worth the price; Recommended (weight 0.36): The game is highly recommended and considered worth its price. Reviewers highlight its addictiveness, replayability, and potential, often rating it highly and encouraging others to purchase it, citing it as a great value for the entertainment provided.
- Anticipating future content/updates (weight 0.24): Many reviewers are looking forward to future updates and content additions. They acknowledge the game's potential and express excitement about its continued development, hoping for improvements, new features, and a more complete experience in the full release.
- Consider price and early access (weight 0.14): The game's Early Access status and price point are significant factors in purchase recommendations. Some suggest buying it on sale or before a price increase, while others advise waiting for further development or a full release before investing, especially if the price is too high for the current content.
- Recommended for genre enthusiasts (weight 0.14): The game is frequently recommended to fans of specific genres like roguelikes, strategy, and deck-building games. Reviewers often draw comparisons to popular titles like Slay the Spire and Into the Breach, suggesting it appeals to players who enjoy similar mechanics and challenges.
- Strategic, deep, and engaging (weight 0.1): The game is praised for its potential, strategic depth, and engaging mechanics, blending city-building, card-based tactics, and roguelike elements. It rewards creative thinking and offers a unique experience, with reviewers recommending it to players who enjoy experimenting with builds and pushing their limits.
- Awaiting fixes for positive review (weight 0.03): Some reviewers are withholding positive reviews until specific issues, particularly stability, are addressed. They anticipate improvements and bug fixes over time and express hope for future additions like workshop support and more achievements.
- Try demo or watch gameplay (weight 0.02): Reviewers suggest watching gameplay on YouTube or trying the demo to see if you'll like it. It's worth buying to pass the time when bored.
- Luck-based; Buy lottery tickets (weight 0.01): This cluster contains emotional language without specific details and uses sarcasm instead of feedback. The reviewer suggests that the money spent on the game would be better spent on lottery tickets due to the game's heavy reliance on luck. Importance score reduced by 90%.

Other player notes:
- Discovered game, acknowledges potential (weight 0.03): The reviewer discovered the game through a specific channel and acknowledges the developers have stated they will continue to update the game. The reviewer expresses a willingness to check on its progress in the future.
- Distinct pixel-art visual style (weight 0.02): The game features a distinct visual style, often described as pixel-art with a retro-medieval aesthetic. This style contributes to the game's overall atmosphere and charm.
- Desire for mod support (weight 0.02): Reviewers suggest adding mod support to increase player engagement and allow for custom content. This feature is seen as a way to extend the game's longevity and provide more variety.
- Run time is 15-30 minutes (weight 0.01): A typical game run lasts approximately 15-30 minutes, depending on player skill and game speed. This relatively short playtime makes the game accessible for quick sessions.
- Need more in-game information (weight 0.01): Reviewers would like more information available to the player, such as stats for enemy units and player towers. This would help players make more informed decisions and strategize effectively.
- Desire offensive actions (weight 0.01): The reviewer wants the ability to attack other kingdoms, instead of only defending. This would add more strategic depth and options to the gameplay.
- Optimize unit performance (weight 0.01): The reviewer suggests implementing a unit limit or simulating units after a certain threshold to improve performance. This would help to reduce lag and ensure smooth gameplay, especially in later stages of the game.
- Need better tutorials (weight 0.01): The reviewer doesn't know how to skip a turn when holding cards they don't want to play. This indicates a need for better in-game tutorials or tooltips to explain game mechanics.

Emotions:
No emotions}