Mini Review – A World of Keflings
God Sim
The cutest slavery sim is back.
Rich
We’re a little late with this review and by now everyone will be telling you it’s great and in some ways it is. Keflings has always been about cuteness, relaxing gameplay and steady progress and World is no different. Everything is just like the previous game – which, if you didn’t play it means that you (your Xbox avatar indeed) get to walk around the game area mining resources to create components that eventually fit together to make buildings. These buildings then allow you to use other resources, thus creating more buildings.
To help you out, you can assign roles to the Keflings in your town – from chopping down trees for wood, mining crystals or digging ice. They can also act as transporters, automating the processes that occur in the game such as the transformation of plain wood to neat planks and finally to carved, artistic pieces. Building houses allows you to increase your workforce as well.
This would be easier if you'd just move to where the food is.
World plays much like its predecessor. You build things in exactly the same way as before and there do not seem to be that many new buildings this time around. A couple of neat interface tweaks mean that now a team of builder Keflings will help you finish off buildings (which is actually pretty useful) and will bring new components to you, allowing you to get back to kicking Keflings in their faces.
The biggest perceived change in the game is the introduction of new lands (hence the titular change from Kingdom to World). There is a little crossover – resources found in one type of area can eventually become available in other areas – but this aspect of the game is rather unfinished and underwhelming. Indeed if I tell you that the two new areas are an ice level and a desert level you’ll see just how uninspiring this addition is.
Whilst the mood of this review is turning dark, let’s go all the way. World of Keflings succeeds at everything it tries to do except for one main thing. There really is no gameplay here. The building process is still a little dull to be honest and the buildings don’t really do anything that interesting. You can’t fail as such and there are no penalties for making a complete mess of a town, nor are there any advantages to making something well-ordered. The obsessive compulsives among you may enjoy splitting your towns into residential, commercial and industrial zones and painting the areas different, but appropriate, colours (or else someone you care about will die) but that’s about it.
Master planners among you may want to take your talents online where the assorted filth on Xbox Live will most likely trash your town for you, proving that no matter what the game, people on Live are cunts. You could stick with your friends but they’ll all be bored of this after a day. It’s a shame because World of Keflings is so cute and endearing but with no real gameplay to speak of, this is just an attractive failure.
4/10