This week yet another Xbox Live Arcade game has been revealed. NinjaBee, the developers that brought us such games as Band of Bugs, Outpost Kaloki, and Cloning Clyde are hard at work bringing as A Kingdom For Keflings.
IGN.com has posted an interview with the president of NinjaBee, Steve Taylor.
Some notable parts of the interview:
IGN: We haven’t heard anything about A Kingdom for Keflings yet. What’s the main objective in the game? How do you “win” the game?
Steve Taylor: The objective is to build a Kingdom for the Keflings that live in a little valley. Officially, you “win” the game when you build a castle! There’s actually a bit more you can do after the castle in terms of customizing your kingdom, but that’s the official goal (and, naturally, it earns you the big Achievement).
IGN: How much replayability is there in Keflings? Will each game be unique or is there a set of structured levels?
Taylor: The game is somewhat sandbox-like in design. There are no distinct levels, just a growing changing world like you’d find in other city builders. There is a tech tree to explore, but there’s plenty of room for taking a custom path and making a lot of personal decisions on how and when and where to build what. Different decisions affect the general flow of the kingdom in different ways, so it’s fun to play the game again and do things differently. There are also quests that players can follow to earn more points and get upgrades, or they can be completely ignored.
IGN: The screenshots make Keflings look a lot like a classic strategy/god game. How important is strategy to the gameplay?
Taylor: It depends a bit on what approach you want to take to the game. If you want to get to the castle as fast as possible, your strategy should tend to focus on the technology tree. If you’re more interested in having an active bustling kingdom, you might focus instead on upgrades, resource gathering, etc. And if you want to focus on quests, each quest has unique approaches that work better than others. In the end the game is playable in many different ways and has a lot to offer players with widely varying styles of play.
IGN: How long will a typical Keflings game last?
Taylor: Building a full kingdom will probably last 10-12 hours for the first-timer, depending on their focus.
IGN: When can we expect the development for A Kingdom for Keflings to be complete?
Taylor: We’re shooting for a release later this fall.
You can read the interview in full here.
Early game footage:
