''King Arthur's Gold'' is a free online
action game
An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, and platform gam ...
developed and published by Transhuman Design for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Gameplay
''King Arthur's Gold'' (often abbreviated and referred to as ''KAG'') is a game about mining resources, building castles and destroying the player's enemies. It is a side-scrolling 2D pixelated action online multiplayer and offline singleplayer war game with a focus on building by gathering resources, buying and unleashing siege machines, and player vs player combat. There are three playable classes: Knight, Archer, and Builder. Each class has its own role in KAG and works together to defeat the enemy team. Knights excel at close range combat and demolition using bombs and explosive
kegs
A keg is a small barrel.
Wooden kegs made by a cooper were used to transport nails, gunpowder, and a variety of liquids.
A keg is normally now constructed of stainless steel, although aluminium can be used if it is coated with plastic on ...
. Archers have superior mobility and a selection of specialized arrows (fire arrows which burn wood and enemies, water arrows with a "splash" effect that stuns enemies, and bomb arrows that destroy blocks and deal
splash damage) and a grappling hook that can be used for scaling walls and escaping enemies. Builders erect fortifications block by block, build "shops" (mainly as structures to buy items), lay traps, dig tunnels and initiate
escalades.
Some inspirations for the game are ''Soldat'', ''Minecraft'', ''Dungeon Keeper'', ''Ace of Spades'', and ''King Arthur's World''. In ''KAG'', two teams (by default red and blue, though by typing
cheat commands in chat other teams of other colors, such as grey, magenta, and green, can be accessed and played) struggle to dominate the other on a giant randomly generated or custom-made 2D map. There are five online multiplayer modes: CTF (Capture the Flag - capture all enemy flags while not letting the enemy capture yours by bringing it back to their flag, and vice versa), TDM (Team Death Match - play as either an Archer or Knight in a 2-minute skirmish), THH (Take the Halls - capture all the halls to win), Sandbox (a free range mode with no objective) and Challenge (an assortment of different minute-spanning challenges, such as kill all enemies, or make it to the end of a map, where at the end of the match a leaderboard is shown along with the best score recorded on that server). The singleplayer mode includes Challenge and Sandbox modes like in multiplayer, along with a basic Tutorials section (Basics, Capture the Flag, and Take the Halls) and the short Save the Princess campaign, where the player fights against a purple-clothed
necromancer named Sedgwick.
Modding
The game has extensive
modding support. Whole game logic is written in
AngelScript and can be easily modified by anyone. Numerous mods have been created, adding new classes, items, and game modes.
Total conversion
Video game modding (short for "modification") is the process of alteration by players or fans of one or more aspects of a video game, such as how it looks or behaves, and is a sub-discipline of general modding. Mods may range from small changes an ...
mods also exist, e.g. ''Shiprekt'' where players build ships from blocks in a
top-down view
A variety of Computer graphics, computer graphic techniques have been used to display video game content throughout the history of video games. The predominance of individual techniques have evolved over time, primarily due to Graphics hardware, ...
arena. Players can also create their own custom heads (the only point of customization) and use them along with the official built-in ones (which are mostly human, but a brown pop-eyed
horse and
zombie one can be found), as long as the modded server supports and recognize it. A few heads are recognized by modded, unofficial, and official games (multiplayer and singleplayer), but those are specially-earned, usually by being part of the development team of ''King Arthur's Gold''. Heads are merely cosmetic, changing nothing, not even the
hitbox where damage can be dealt.
Development
The team of THD started working on KAG (King Arthur's Gold) at April 18, 2011, the first alpha version was released only 3 days later. The public beta was released silently on 1 May 2013.
The real release of the game was on 5 November 2013.
KAG is still under active development as of early 2019, the main focus is on bugfixing, adding minor content (now mainly done by volunteers), and supporting the community to develop content itself (make mods for the game).
Reception
The game has very positive (83%) reviews on Steam
and received an aggregated score of 81% at
Metacritic.
As of November 2016 the game has sold over 200 000 copies.
Critics praised its fast-paced battles and light-hearted approach to medieval combat, while criticizing bugs and poor single player.
References
External links
*
* {{MobyGames, id=/king-arthurs-gold, name=''King Arthur's Gold''
2013 video games
Action video games
Linux games
MacOS games
Video games based on Arthurian legend
Video games developed in Poland
Windows games