A World of Keflings

Game Info

Back in the early years of downloadable console titles, Microsoft with the Xbox and then Xbox 360 was leading the pack.  I still remember the clunky origins of the Xbox Live Arcade on the original Xbox which was almost impossible to navigate and only had a few titles.  Then when the Xbox 360 launched, they took a huge leap forward and were the big dog in town for years.  Now Sony and Nintendo have caught up and are on par for arcade titles and one of the early games to grace the Xbox Live Arcade service from NinjaBee was a simulation game in the style of Black & White or Civilization called A Kingdom for Keflings.  Now NinjaBee, thankfully for Nintendo fans, have taken the sequel, A World of Keflings, and ported it over to the Wii U.

The story that is in A World of Keflings is aimed to be humorous in tone.  The tongue-in-cheek humor hits for the most part but is somewhat whimsical in others.  You play as your system’s Mii character, which is really cool to see an indie developer use Nintendo’s Mii API, and order and supervise the Keflings population.  There is plenty of story content here and Ninja has included all 3 DLC packs (It Came From Outer Space, Sugar, Spice and Not So Nice and The Curse of the Zombiesaurus) with the initial purchase, which gives this $9.99 bundle a Orange Box-like feel.

Unlike many simulation games there is extreme hand holding, which is great for newer players to the genre but may annoy experienced players.  You will learn to boss around the Keflings through story missions and also side missions which will pop up as you progress through the game.  The touchscreen is used for easy building manipulation by just tapping on the facility you would like to construct from.  This is an easy and useful feature but is makes the game unplayable off-screen which is a bummer.

As for control of your Mii Character, everything is nice and smooth.  The left stick will move your character as the right stick will move the camera.  You can pick up the Keflings and place them on resources to start collecting them.  After they have finished harvesting the resources you can pick them up and drop them on a stoarge facility and then it will have created a loop where they will continue the cycle until you stop them. This is extremely helpful as it makes micromanaging not too difficult. Resources are used to construct new buildings.  You get special helper Keflings which carry the parts of a building to where you would like to place them and then you use the blueprint to place the objects in the correct order to finish the building.  Once a building is finished you have to place a Kefling into the building to run it which depletes one of your resource grabbers.  You can get more Keflings by building housing units for them, but each requires a heart to complete and those come through with story quests.  Another example of the game hand holding and leading you through without letting you stray to far.

There is plenty of content here and the expansion packs add more story-driven content and have new skins to use which almost makes them feel like standalone sequels.  The graphics look good but nothing that we haven’t seen before.  It looks a little cleaner then it’s Xbox counterpart but not a complete overhaul.  The soundtrack is very slow and has a strummed acoustic guitar every so often.  It reminded me of the Uno games soundtrack for some reason, which I partially enjoyed.

The Recommendation

There aren’t many simulation games on the Wii U period.  The only one that comes to might is Pikmin 3, but even that doesn’t have an building elements, just seek and destroy.  A World of Keflings not only scratches the itch for a building sim but it also does it damn well.  I would have preferred a little more freedom in creating my towns, but the huge amount of content and great gameplay can not go unnoticed and it feels like a steal for the low price of $9.99.  If you own a Wii U, do yourself a favor and add A World of Keflings to your digital library.