Few genres in video games get the same high level of activity that we see in first-person shooters. There are so many different types of FPS games, that a number of sub-genres have come about in order to try and more clearly categorize the exact experience each game provides. Strategic military sims like ARMA, Area Battle games like Halo, and the affectionately named “boomer-shooters” that look to past inspirations such as the original DOOM and Quake, are just a few sub-genres of FPS games that all offer completely different ways of play.
Kingdom of the Dead is a retro-style FPS game that wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Developed by Dirigo Games and published by HOOK, the game places players behind the eyes of Agent Chamberlain, a former professor turned Army General tasked with defeating hordes of monsters and Death himself, accompanied by a seemingly sentient sword. Despite this setup and a few brief moments of dialogue, the game isn’t focused on telling a grand narrative. While the game has a strong core gameplay loop and an interesting art style, there are a number of issues that range from technical to design that hold Kingdom of the Dead back from reaching its true potential.
Gameplay in Kingdom of the Dead works much like its retro predecessors. The player is dropped into one of nine levels in which they proceed through a number or large environments, collecting weapons and ammo that they will use to defend themselves from a number of DOOM inspired enemies ultimately making their way to the end of the level, where a boss battle awaits and a gateway to Hell that needs closing. Levels are largely linear, but many do offer areas that serve as mini arenas that incorporate both wide-open spaces as well as building interiors that inject a bit of verticality. At many points, you will even get a glimpse of a later part of the level you are playing which is a nice touch. Some standout levels include “The Frontline” which features a large battlefield that players need to move across while dodging incoming cannonballs and enemies appearing over the horizon, as well as “Downtown” which starts the player on the street level of a city and tasks them with climbing up through a series of buildings culminating in a boss fight on top of a clocktower. Levels across the board are, for the most part, designed well and are fairly lengthy, depending on skill level and speed some players may find themselves spending upwards of 20 minutes on any given level.
As one would hope with a game focused on shooting guns, the weaponry in Kingdom of the Dead is a blast to wield. The game is set during the 19th century and thus the arsenal is reflective of that “wild-west” time period. Players will use a revolver, double-barrel shotgun, lever-action rifle, a hand-crank machine gun, and many others to dispatch Death’s armies. The sound effects for the weapons offer a crisp crack with every mouse click. The animations provide a lot of character for each of the weapons, exemplified through a revolver twirl between shots or racking the lever of the lever-action rifle with one hand. For certain weapons, the time between finishing a reload animation and actually being able to fire the weapon again feels a little too long, specifically with a weapon like the double-barrel shotgun. There were times when I was frantically clicking post reload to take out an enemy rushing into my face, yet the shot took an extra-long time to finally fire off that felt unnatural. Beyond this minor gripe, the weapons have each of their specific uses for countering different enemies and they always feel fun to switch between during combat.
Speaking of combat, the movement controls feel light and fast, emulating the feel of those late ‘90’s FPS games. The jumping has just the right amount of floatiness and the speed of the character while sprinting is fairly quick. The combination of the two allows for quick traversal through environments and great flexibility in moving around enemies during combat. As I got more comfortable with the controls and became more familiar with certain enemy locations, I found myself being able to skate across levels with great efficiency, going for daring headshots while jumping, and finding myself generally enjoying my time just moving around and shooting. It’s in this core gameplay that Kingdom of the Dead truly nails the feeling of the retro shooters it’s inspired by. It’s the most engaging part and at its most basic level carries with it enough engagement to entertain through its roughly 6-hour playtime.
Before moving on from combat, I want to highlight the dismemberment system in the game, particularly in regards to headshots. Headshots (when done well) are an extremely satisfying aspect of any shooting game, and Kingdom of the Dead has some very satisfying (if morbidly so) headshots. Most enemies in the game can be taken out with a single shot to the head depending on the weapon you are using. This sweet spot for headshots on enemies is fairly small and when engaging in combat at longer distances it becomes quite challenging to land your shot just right. It becomes a satisfying game of risk vs. reward during each combat encounter that adds some much-needed dynamism to the combat to make sure the player isn’t just mindlessly blasting demons. Other body parts like arms can be severed which will hamper the enemy’s ability to use their weapons so it’s a system that is well implemented and sickly satisfying to interact with.
The other major aspect of the game to touch on is its unique “pen-scratch” art style. Almost everything in Kingdom of the Dead looks as though it were scratched on paper with an inky black pen. At first glance, the game is primarily black and white with the exception of bright red blood that spills on the walls and on the ground. The style is reminiscent of Platinum Games Madworld on the Wii, though with a much moodier and creepier atmosphere thanks to the harsh, dark lighting system. There are a number of different color filter options you can play within the options that offer up a different look and feel to the game as well if you are having a hard time with the black and white look, though be warned some of these filter options are very bold and a little tough on the eyes.
While the core gameplay is fun and the visuals are interesting to look at, there are unfortunately many aspects of Kingdom of the Dead that come up short, both on the technical end and from a design perspective.
Seeing as they are the most visible I’ll start with the technical issues. Kingdom of the Dead has a number of visual, audio, and gameplay bugs in its current form. Throughout my time playing, there were instances where pieces of geometry in a level would have completely transparent sides. In one place, I could look into a hallway that dropped into a void, the chunk of level would only load when I passed into the hallway itself. On two separate instances, I got stuck inside a wall and needed to either kill myself or restart the level to become free. Several times enemies would get stuck in walls and would continue to shoot out of them despite there being no way for me to take them out. In the settings menu, I went to turn down the master volume level and while most sounds were reduced, some sounds like creature noises were unaffected or not affected enough by my changes. And during the mission “The Ship”, there is a sort of escape sequence in the latter half of the mission. During this sequence, I ended up dying and the game constantly respawned me in a void outside the level that dropped me to my death infinitely, and caused me to quit out of the level and restart from the beginning.
According to the credits that rolled upon finishing the game, it appears that Dirigo Games is a small team if not a single person. I feel this is important to mention because it adds context behind these bugs and the criticism of them. It’s fantastic that we are at a point in this industry where a 3D FPS game can be developed by small single-person teams, and I wish not to diminish the talents of Dirigo Games. For the most part, the visual bugs are not a big point of contention, they didn’t drastically hamper my enjoyment of the game. What hampers my enjoyment are the bugs that start affecting the gameplay like getting stuck in walls or being forced to restart due to infinitely spawning over a pit of death. These are issues that with time can be fixed and I hope some of the more pressing gameplay affecting bugs are addressed post-release.
Outside of bugs, there are some very strange design decisions that also lead to less enjoyment while playing. The chief of which stems from the decision to give monster corpses physical collision. By that I mean after you kill an enemy, instead of phasing through the corpse-like many other games, in Kingdom of the Dead you physically collide with the corpse and many times have to jump over the corpse in order to get around it. It is a little thing that ultimately has a rather large impact on gameplay because when the bodies start piling up or when you are being chased by enemy pursuers, you can often get caught on enemies you have already killed which can lead to you taking additional damage or even falling off a ledge to your death (both of which happened during my playthrough). Other decisions like bosses killing the player in a single hit cause frustration when it isn’t exactly clear what the player should be doing during a specific boss fight. One of the final levels, “The Mountain”, has many narrow pathways that can lead to the player’s death by falling, and while playing on the hardest difficulty the number of enemies and general lack of health pickups makes the entire ordeal just a pain to get through. Not to mention the game culminating in an encounter that effectively removes the player’s guns, a weird decision in a game focused on shooting. All of these decisions feel like they take away from the overall enjoyment of the game or are just confusing in their implementation.
I mentioned that I was playing Kingdom of the Dead on the hardest difficulty, the game features 3 difficulty modes that change the number of enemies you fight in a given level as well as add on additional objectives to complete. On paper, these are interesting and impactful changes, but in execution, they end up being half-baked. The increased enemy numbers are noticeable, but it ultimately doesn’t feel like the numbers were cranked enough. Some of the larger areas in levels even with the increased numbers feel a little too empty. While the numbers of enemies do increase, their tactics or A.I. doesn’t change in any meaningful way. And on the topic of the enemies, while they do have unique designs, many of them are very clearly inspired by enemies from DOOM, which may have been done in homage but I struggle to recall many enemies that feel truly unique to this game. Animations on some enemies are also quite janky, the human enemies, in particular, contort their spines and necks in unnatural ways to keep eye contact locked to the player. Most of the time I had enough ammo to match any encounter, and the new objectives that the individual modes advertise boil down to finding a hidden collectible in each mission and completing a mission without killing any civilians which there is usually a very small amount of civilians present anyway. Playing on the highest difficulty feels like playing the game on normal, so I think some tweaking in a few areas may make the difficulty jump feel more impactful.
The last of my criticisms have to do with the ambiance of the game in regards to its lighting and music. I mentioned above how the lighting in the game is moody and dark which is accurate. At times the lighting looks really cool, casting long shadows of enemies illuminated from behind by a large fire. But for as much as the lighting does to look cool, it also looks much too dark in many places, dark to the point where it was hard to make out certain enemies that were closing in for an attack or certain objects like tables in a dark room, even after turning out the lights in the room I was playing in. I’m sure part of it was done intentionally because it does lend itself well to the art style, but it’s just too dark in some areas to effectively navigate or assess incoming threats. And to touch on the music, it just feels completely out of place. The music has a sort of 80’s synth-inspired sound mixed with retro-sounding tones, no doubt to sound like a retro game. But this type of music clashes very aggressively against the 19th-century world the game is set in. There exists a world where this combo may work well, but the music honestly feels like it’s from an entirely different game. The most memorable aspect of the music was how weird it felt hearing it in combination with what I was watching on screen.
Before closing, I would also like to mention that when the game releases on February 10 and it will cost $14.99. I believe the price is an important aspect to discuss seeing as I have just discussed an extensive list of positives and negatives. If this were a AAA $60 dollar release, I think it would be hard to recommend. However, at $14.99, the core gameplay in Kingdom of the Dead is fun and replayable to a degree. I got nearly 6 hours of playtime just going through the game and running through a few levels again here and there. And the art style is visually distinct which is hard to achieve in an oversaturated game genre. All of that is to say that there are worse ways you could spend $15.
Kingdom of the Dead is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s a fun retro-inspired indie shooter that has a distinct visual style and good level design that doesn’t overstay its welcome or break the bank. On the other hand, it has a good amount of technical issues, frustrating design elements, and features that feel hastily implemented or lack significant depth. If you are looking for something to scratch a retro gaming itch or just want to shoot some demons of Death with vintage weaponry, Kingdom of the Dead will fit the bill. But it might be worth waiting until some future patches fix some of its underlying issues.
