This article is about two amazing games Kingdom Two Crowns and Core Keeper. Both games are almost polar opposites in difficulty, gameplay and story, but they are both really fun in their own ways.
(Also if your worrying if these games are getting updated regularly, I’m pretty sure Kingdom has already had 6 major updates since release and Core Keeper has had around 9. Don’t trust my numbers but they are getting regular updates. 🙂 )
KINGDOM TWO CROWNS
Firstly, I’m going to talk about Kingdom Two Crowns and honestly, I adore this game. Its art style, gameplay loop and story are amazing. The only thing that stops me from playing this game is THE DIFFICULTY. It’s probably me being bad but holy hell is this game hard. Personally I play on the normal difficulty and I always struggle even though Kingdom Two Crowns is actually the most forgiving game in the series. Before I explain any further, this game’s unique mechanic is its day and night cycle. Lemme explain. First of all every night you survive, your day counter goes up by 1. Pretty simple BUT to every day there is a night and the night is merciless. Because every night there is like a 50/50 chance you’re going to get attacked by swarms of monsters called The Greed they spawn from two portals on each side of the map (illustrated below).
Every night, more of The Greed come in the raids so that’s why daytime is good because it allows you to restock troops, repair barriers and expand your kingdom. Plus if you get far enough, you can expand to other islands with the benefits of better mounts and many more things but in all seriousness this game is a very good strategy game for beginners because you can turn down the difficulty and there are so many options for player who want a challenge including hard and cursed difficulty and the challenge worlds which have objectives in them too so it’s really a very good game for all kinds of players. The problem is I can’t say much more or I will spoil the experience. 🙁
CORE KEEPER
Now I’m going to be talking about Core Keeper: probably the best survival crafting game in the history of the survival crafting genre. This game is phenomenal in terms of balancing sandbox and story and it’s really good at unconsciously advising the player to go to certain areas or find certain things to progress. This game has a very vague story but it unwinds itself to the player as they progress leading to a lot of ‘Aha!’ moments but it’s so rewarding once you figure these things out.
Okay let me explain the actual game instead of talking about how good it is. When you first start Core Keeper, you are prompted with a problem: you (the player) where exploring the deep jungle and found a weird rock that teleported you stupidly deep underground with no way of getting back to the surface, and just like any good survival crafting game, there is no end. That may sound scary but the underground is a pretty beautiful place… until you realize your not alone and there are monsters everywhere! Fear not for you have your trusty Core. The Core is you main hub and around the Core are three statues that represent the three bosses you have to defeat to progress in this game. I won’t elaborate on that too much, cos spoilers, but you end up finding out that these bosses hold special crystals that power your Core.
Your trusty wooden pickaxe isn’t very strong and can’t break through anything other than dirt so you need to get upgrading. Luckily every boss you defeat you can get special items and armor to help you on your journey.
Even better, this game is in constant development which I find so cool, because the devs really care about their game have designed it to suit a range of different play styles. You wanna blow stuff up, you can do that. You wanna slice and dice through hordes of enemies, you can do that. You wanna become a skilled archer that can knock out enemies from a distance, you can do that. WANNA BECOME A WIZARD AND BLOW EVEN MORE STUFF, UP YOU CAN DO THAT.
This game is like Minecraft but for people who want more chaos per chaos. That might make no sense but if you play the game you will soon understand.