Kingdom Two Crowns Brings Side-Scrolling Multiplayer Strategy To Xbox Game Pass
Building a kingdom with the buddy system.
Ruling a kingdom seems like hard work, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be too complicated. City builders and strategy games tend to be complex by nature, demanding that players adapt to difficult rules and detailed interfaces from the very beginning. But they don’t always have to follow that pattern, as demonstrated by a new Xbox Game Pass addition that takes the simpler form of a side-scrolling game.
In 2015, players were introduced to Kingdom, a strategy game that follows a king establishing their two-dimensional domain on horseback. A sequel, Kingdom: New Lands, followed the next year, but the series really hit its stride with 2018’s Kingdom Two Crowns. Initially intended as a DLC for New Lands, Two Crowns builds on the solid foundations of its predecessors, while also being the first game in the series to feature a multiplayer mode.
Kingdom Two Crowns is less involved than other strategy games, but just as fun.
The simplified strategy of Two Crowns leaves players with less control over their kingdoms than typical city builders, but it’s more immediately satisfying as a result. As monarch, you walk back and forth across your side-scrolling kingdom, tossing coins at the lowly peasants you need to do your bidding. Your limited pool of gold lets you recruit local villagers for any task you need done, whether that’s clearing the land, building defensive walls, or taking up arms to defend the kingdom from invaders.
Your position as ruler means you never have to do any actual work for yourself, of course. After paying for the work to be done, all that’s left for you is to wait for your orders to be carried out. That gives Two Crowns a slow pace that can be deliberate and relaxing or frustratingly sluggish, depending on your own state of mind.
Where things get considerably less relaxing is in Two Crowns’ day and night cycle. By day, you’re free to trot through the kingdom, ordering necessary repairs and upgrades as you see fit. At night, the land is assaulted by the Greed, a horde of monsters appearing from the dark to destroy your structures and make off with your gold. The king doesn’t directly take part in battle, but the defensive structures and guards you’ve funded throughout the day will determine whether you survive the night.
Invasions by the Greed keep you from getting too comfortable.
The original Kingdom is a roguelike, where if your monarch falls in battle, it’s game over. Two Crowns puts a considerably gentler spin on that system, but one that still has major consequences. If the Greed manages to overcome your king, the game keeps going, but you’ll continue as their heir and your first task will be to oversee the difficult rebuilding of the kingdom, fixing the damage done by the Greed before carrying on. Rebuilding can be a slow and challenging process, but not having to start from scratch after each failure does make Two Crowns more forgiving than its predecessors.
As its title foreshadows, Two Crowns also features a splitscreen two-player mode. Multiplayer is mostly identical to the standard solo mode, giving both players the ability to collect coins and direct their subjects to build the kingdom. In multiplayer mode, a king who loses to the Greed will have their crown stolen, after which they can only collect coins and give them to the surviving king to make upgrades.
The addition of multiplayer makes Kingdom Two Crowns a much better game.
Two Crowns is a great strategy game either way, but multiplayer definitely adds to the experience. The slow pace of the game is more enjoyable when you’ve got another player to strategize with, and having someone to watch your back is helpful as well. Playing with another person also lets you show off the new mounts that Two Crowns introduces, letting you trade in your horse for more fantastical options like gryphons and giant lizards.
It may not be the deepest strategy game out there, but Two Crowns is certainly one of the easiest to grasp, and its side-scrolling structure makes it the perfect console city builder now that it’s on Xbox Game Pass.
