Roguelike strategy 9 Kings certainly played its cards right on its early access debut earlier this year. Developer Sad Socket’s concept of using cards to place and upgrade units and buildings was so compelling that it even convinced deckbuilding sceptic Fraser Brown of the genre’s merits. “Runs are brisk, the mechanics are simple, but there’s actually a whole lot to dig into, he wrote back in August. “And honestly, I just love watching my pixel-sized troops going to war.”
For all its strengths, however, 9 Kings was missing one small feature…nine kings. Up until this week, 9 Kings only had eight kings available to play as, using their unique decks to construct your base and fend off enemy forces. Talk about an embarrassing oversight! If I were making a game called 9 Kings, I would ensure it had the requisite number of monarchs befitting its title from the start!
Fortunately, as of its most recent update, 9 Kings finally lives up to its name. The final ruler to enter the fight is The King of Time, who Sad Socket describes as “a multidimensional gentleman who travels through the ages in search of more kingdoms to conquer.” Basically, he’s evil Dr Who.
Naturally, the King of Time’s deck is themed around temporal shenanigans, with cards that variously reward players for being fast or slow. The most crucial component to the King of Time’s playstyle, however, is how it lets you travel through time.
This is facilitated by one particularly powerful-sounding card—the Portal card. “Thanks to the Portal card, you can go to a previous year while keeping your kingdom’s progress, allowing you to relive key events in broken ways,” Sad Socket explains. “Portals are not easy to use, but when you get it right, you’ll be able to stack more building buffs, triggers dozens of diplomacy events in a row [and] get extra royal decrees.”
The King of Time’s dominion over the fourth dimension likewise comes into play during battle. Some of his military powers are obvious, like the Adrenaline card’ ability to speed up battles. Others are stranger. The Bastion card, for example, sends enemy troops back to the beginning of a battle.
While most of the updates’ new features revolve around The King of Time, there are a couple of broader additions too. With all nine kings introduced to 9 Kings, Sad Socket says it wanted to “give you some agency when picking your enemies”. The result is a new starting perk called Banisher, allowing you to remove a king from your next run. In other words, now that 9 Kings finally has nine kings, you can reduce 9 Kings to eight kings if nine kings proves too many. Clear?
Elsewhere, the update overhauls 9 Kings’ difficulty to make easier modes harder and harder modes less RNG reliant, adds a bunch of Steam achievements, and rolls out a kingdom’s worth of balance tweaks and bugfixes. And while 9 Kings is officially king-complete, Sad Socket says this represents merely the beginning of its early access plans
“With a solid foundation, we’ll finally be able to really expand the game beyond its core,” the developer writes. “A lot more content will come soon, and you can expect a patch with new decrees & cards in the coming weeks.” Sad Socket’s main priority, however, is the introduction of new game modes, specifically challenge and ranked modes that the developers hope will “take 9 Kings to a new level.”
If you’re yet to sample 9 Kings and want to see how it plays now that all kings are anointed, Sad Socket’s strategy roguelike is currently 55% off. That brings the price down to $9 (£8), or one dollar per king. The discount runs until October 23.
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