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A World of Keflings Review

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They’re back! The Keflings have returned thanks to the folks at NinjaBee Games and Microsoft Game Studios, and they need your help. This time you’re traveling the world and you can help to build three separate kingdoms and meet many new types of Keflings! If you’re not familiar with this casual yet addictive series, it’s a building simulation game that allows you to freely create your own virtual world using your avatar while listening to yet another addictive and catchy original soundtrack.

 

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HERE’S WHAT’S GREAT ABOUT IT….

 

3X THE FUN!

The first thing you should know about A World of Keflings is the fact that there’s so much more to do. In the original game you have to build a single kingdom for the hard-working keflings but your experience has been vastly expanded this time around. Using your avatar you’ll have to farm resources using the help of the keflings and use those resources to create three entire kingdoms.  The concept is the same in each one, but the resources vary between areas, and the blueprints and designs of each and every building are completely original so you never feel like you’re doing the same thing three times over.

 

YOU’VE GOT SOME HELP!

Meet Bob and Doug, the first helpful friends you’ll meet in the game. Bob and Doug are what you call ‘Builders’  and they’re part of the game to help make your building experience a little quicker. For example, if you are building a three piece home, you can grab the first piece and walk to wherever you  want to build it, and Bob and Doug will each carry a piece and follow you. This saves on the old-fashioned method of traveling back and forth to do every piece yourself. As you progress in the game you’ll unlock and meet new builders who join the ranks and help out greatly on the larger structures. Whenever you  build a structure in the game they builders will memorize it. Say you need a second house – create all three pieces, and pick up and place the first one where you want it built. The builders will then proceed to finish building it, saving you more time and energy.

DON’T LIKE IT THERE?

Another new feature that NinjaBee has introduced is the ability to push a building when it’s fully assembled. Since you start out early in the game with limited space and lots of resources filling the area, you’re likely going to need to move stuff around. Previously you had to break down buildings and move them piece by piece, but now you can simply hold the Y button to move them around a level. The movement is slow, but it’s still better than carrying ten pieces of a building across the entire map.

EMOTES AND COLLECTIBLES

When playing with friends, or even trying to get the attention of your nimble little followers, you can use a variety of emotes using the D-pad. There’s a couple of developer viral emotes included so ask around in multiplayer to see if you can learn them. If you don’t have a boot and ring icon in the top row of emotes, you’ll need to have someone owning those emotes stand near you and teach them to you. In addition to the emotes, A World of Keflings has a great sharing system for its collectibles. The game features over sixty collectibles that can be built in the game and used as decorative pieces. Players can share their collections with others and help others to easily achieve 100% in even the first minute of playing the game. Hey, it’s a quick achievement and it saves you doing all the work to find earn them.

LEVEL UP!

An RPG-esque aspect is now part of the keflings series – character levels! Based on time spent doing specific jobs, Keflings can be leveled up by slapping them (so fun!) when a yellow arrow is above their heads. As they increase in levels, they can move faster, farm quicker, and carry more at once. Each kefling has five levels to go through and levels on one job are kept even if you change their job. For example, if you have a level five lumberjack and you switch him/her to a transporter kefling, he/she retains the level 5 rating of lumberjack while simultaneously working towards becoming a level five transporter.

 

MORE RESOURCES

As I mentioned, new areas carry new resources and you can actually create new resources using traders and or other methods in the game. This adds more into the gameplay and allows for new items to be created, and new areas to farm resources. Sure, it’s more work, but, that’s why you have the keflings to help you!

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LESS SLOWDOWN

If you played A Kingdom for Keflings, then you surely noticed a big improvement. Previous, whenever precipitation began to fall, the framerate would drop immensely and the game would be clunky for a few moments. NinjaBee took notice and the framerate seems to stay around  a steady thirty frames per second now. Later in the game you’ll find some drops but it’s understandable with nearly sixty keflings walking around and various buildings featuring moving parts. It’s a beautiful site so slowing down to take a look doesn’t hurt at all.

LAG-FREE CO-OPERATIVE PLAY

Most people want some help to create a large-scale kingdom so NinjaBee lets you join up online for some four player co-op, or you can choose to play local co-op with your friends or family. The online experience is generally lag-free based upon connections of the players  in the game. You can work together and chat with one another, and show off your crazy avatars – If you see Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in your game, it might just be me!   If you don’t want people joining, it’s an easy as hitting the trigger and switching to a single player game, or keeping it to invite only multiplayer. Also, you don’t have to worry about random people coming into your game and destroying your buildings. Unless you’re on the friends list of the host, you can’t destroy anything.

CANNON MUSIC!

Another new feature is the addition of music cannons. Wait, what? That’s right – you can now create some simple or complex remakes of your favorite themes including Mario Bros, Family Guy, or maybe even Beethoven using cannons that can be built in game. You can change the instrumental sounds of them and organize where you put them. It’s tough to explain, so watch the video from NinjaBee that we’ve shared below.

AND THE NOT SO GREAT….

WHY’D YOU STOP?
When you’ve got numerous keflings working on clearing some resources such as a small forest, you can walk by and notice that they’re standing around doing nothing. There’s no real reason that I could figure out, and it sometimes required me to reset their jobs and get them started again… only to find them stopping again. Maybe it’s glitch or maybe it’s something I’m just not understanding, but it’s an annoyance.

WHERE ARE YOU, BUILDERS?

This is a more common occurrence in multiplayer, but not unheard of in single player. At times you will be building a shop or residence and you’ll notice the builders don’t bring you pieces. For some reason they get hung up staring at the piece waiting to be created, and they won’t assist you until you return to the shop and pick up the second piece.

BLUEPRINTS AND MISSION CONFUSION

Here’s the biggest complaints from me personally – where’s my second book? Using it as an example because I’ve had fellow players ask me this, “Where’s my other book for the academy?” – the missions often feel unclear, or non-linear but not in a good way. You will often find yourself needing to find an item or perform a task that sounds as though it’s immediately available, but it’s actually not. You sometimes need to find and perform other tasks before others become attainable. With blueprints, they don’t necessarily come one after another, and you may need to skip finishing some buildings until later blueprints have been built. The first game was more linear I felt, but it worked well for it.

 

LET’S WRAP UP

It may not be a perfect game, but A World of Keflings is a true successor to A Kingdom For Keflings, and there’s  much more to do in this sequel. Whether you play single player or co-op with friends or family, you’re sure to spent at least ten hours to create your kingdoms, and likely many more perfecting it and making it better than you could ever imagine. Kicking off the Microsoft “Games For the Holidays” promotion, ‘A World of Keflings’ is an extremely charming title that you should own.

Rating
Description
8.5Gameplay
Extremely addictive, casual, and great for socializing. Tiny glitches sometimes appear, but nothing game-breaking.
9.0Graphics
Vividly colorful worlds, weather changes, and more make Keflings a gorgeous looking simulation title.
9.5Sound
Yet another addictive in-game soundtrack that you'll never get tired out hearing. Too bad we can't also use the previous games' music. Hmm?
9.0Final Score

 

 

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