At a glance...

A World of Keflings review

Back in November 2008, the Xbox 360 gained a brand new interface. Amongst other things, it brought along the concept of Avatars - characters that you can customize to your liking. A Kingdom for Keflings was the first game to make use of these avatars. Unfortunately, I didn't have an Xbox 360 back then, and so that's about all I can tell you about the game. Thankfully this is a review for A World of Keflings, so let's crack on!

When I first started playing WoK, my mind immediately recalled two games; Black & White and The Settlers. The first thing that happens in the game is that your avatar turns up in a frozen land, filled with little human-like creatures (called Keflings), and is instantly praised by a slightly larger Kefling called Bob (who is apparently one of several builders). Not content with leaving you alone, Bob starts pestering you to help the Keflings by constructing various buildings. As the game goes on, other characters also ask you to do things for them. Thankfully none of them have this notion that they'd quite like to sail the ocean, or if they do, they keep it to themselves.

Unlike A Kingdom for Keflings, as the different name may suggest, there are now three different kingdoms to play on, the Ice Kingdom (which you start on), the Forest Kingdom (which is the main one), and the Desert Kingdom, with each having different resources and buildings. I'll come on to resources later, but constructing buildings is the main focus of WoK. There are some buildings that are useful to you (like houses, which create more Keflings), and some which just let the story progress. In order to construct a building, you need to have acquired a blueprint for it, and be able to produce/obtain the constituent elements. Once you have both of these, you can just put the building blocks (if you'll excuse the pun) on the floor in the right order, which is helpfully marked for you, and it'll generally magically appear. Blueprints are either found lying around, or are given to you. The components of a building have to be made at workshops - these are buildings that take in materials of some form, and let you use up these resources to make building parts. Handily, workshops will also let you know what you need for your current building, so what sounds like it could be a complex (and annoying) task is fairly simple, which is a common theme for this game.

As I mentioned previously, workshops need materials. These are either raw materials, or they have been processed by a building; for example, a lumber-mill converts logs into planks. They may even need to be processed by more than one building - a carpenter turns planks into carved wood. Thankfully this isn't something that your avatar needs to do themselves (although you can do so if you want), otherwise the game would be extremely dull. Instead, you can assign tasks to Keflings. To use the example of wood, one Kefling could be made to cut down trees, another could carry these logs to the lumbermill, another would carry the planks to the carpenter, and yet another would carry the carved wood to whichever workshop needed it. This does mean that you need to be somewhat careful with your building placement - if you put all the buildings in a suboptimal order, you might be waiting a long time to get all the materials you need. Keflings do gain experience in their jobs, and after a while you can level them up (by smacking them around the head, apparently), which makes them work more efficiently, but this doesn't negate the need for a good layout. You also need to manage where resources are going - you don't want all wood to be turned into carved wood, and you don't want all carved wood going to the same workshop.

Whilst there is strategy involved in WoK, this is very much a casual game. I don't use the word in a pejorative manner, I greatly enjoyed playing the game; what I mean is that the game tries to be very accessible. Testament to this is the fact that I managed to complete it, when I'm normally very poor at this type of game. Right from the outset it's clear what you're expected to do, and everything is explained clearly. As I covered earlier, construction couldn't be simpler - if it's a building you've made before, then the builders will even finish it for you. If at any point you're unsure of what to do, you can press the left trigger and be told. This isn't to say that there's no freedom within the game - one obvious counterexample to this is the cannons which, with the addition of patience, let you create music through launching Keflings.

The only problem I found with the game was that it was over too quickly, taking me a couple of days to complete. Once I'd finished it, with no more goals I had no real compulsion to continue. On the other hand, it does only cost 800 Microsoft Points (£6.80), so you're not paying a full game price. If you're creative, you could also have hours of fun playing around with the cannons. You could also work on unlocking all of the achievements, although you do need to know someone else who owns WoK to be able to get the full set. Alternatively you could start the whole thing again but in co-operative mode, either locally or via Xbox Live.

If you're like me and like the idea of God games but are never any good at them, then A World of Keflings is well worth trying out. Alternatively, if you just fancy something fun to occupy a bit of free time you have, you should give it a go. There's a demo, so there's no excuse (unless you're Matt and don't have any space on your 360). And one thing I can say with a reasonable level of confidence is that the soundtrack won't annoy you, as I've had it playing to me all the time whilst I've been writing this review.

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