A World Of Keflings

Posted 2 years ago By kingquagmire - David Collins

When the Xbox 360’s NXE Dashboard first launched, it brought Avatar support along for the ride; with the promise that these little mini-me’s will be playable within certain games. True to their word, the first game to launch with Avatar support was NinjaBee’s A Kingdom For Keflings. A sort of sandbox city-building God sim ala Black and White, it instantly became a fan favorite among the casual crowd and a guilty pleasure for the hardcore. Now it’s time to take your Avatar back to the Kefling realm in NinjaBee’s sequel: A World of Keflings.

Basically, this sequel takes everything from the first Keflings and makes it bigger and better. As the title suggests, the game world has been expanded. While the main Forest Kingdom is still present and accounted for, there are two sort of mini-kingdoms that flank it. As you progress through the campaign, you’ll bounce back and forth between all three in an effort to satisfy all the Kefling demands in each location.

To differentiate each realm, each has their own unique climate and resources to gather. The shivery cold Ice Kingdom harvests ice blocks and ore while the blistering hot Desert Kingdom has the world covered with it’s abundance of sand - allowing for the production of glass and clay. The Forest Kingdom is just the same as before, with timber, stone and crystals scattered all over the place.

The visuals haven’t really changed much nor has the sound, but there have been some minor changes that helps flesh everything out. Resources gradually disappear as you mine them. Building pieces are color coded by manufacturing location, making it easier to tell where to go to gather all the stuff you need. It even tells you how many of each piece you need as well. Your Keflings no longer follow you around and just wave at you like robotic groupies. They mill about the town, checking everything out. It makes it feel a bit more natural compared to the animated mannequins we had in the previous game.

The Emote is another new addition that can be nice little distraction. With over 20 different emotions at your disposal - including some derived from other games found on your console’s hard drive such as Band of Bugs and Ancients of Ooga - your Avatar will be doing all kinds of stuff like dancing or posing. Your Keflings will respond to them as well, either by joining in the fun and mimicking you or running away in fear when you do something scary. These Emotes are also worked into the story a little, but ultimately, it’s more of a side novelty than anything else.

While the ability to place banners in other worlds via Xbox LIVE is still an option, it’s taken a bit of a back seat to getting collectibles. These unique building blocks can be produced within certain buildings and are required to make anything that can be considered a dwelling; from a small snow house to a full-blown castle. However, you don’t have them all when you play. The only way to acquire all of them is to share with other Xbox LIVE players.

The main campaign will last about 6 or 7 hours depending on how well you manage your little Kefling slaves (or is it the other way around?). Of course, the game doesn’t end there. Players can still go in and mess around with their kingdoms, moving buildings, reorganizing the layout, harvesting resources, etc... Along with upgrading your Avatar’s abilities, each Kefling can be upgraded as well, making him or her a bit better at performing whatever task you have them doing. Multiplayer is pretty much the same as the last go round, although local support is now an option for those who want to bring a family member in to play in their kingdom.

Conclusion

All told, World of Keflings is a proper continuation for the franchise. Expanding on just about everything and putting a much heavier focus on the story-telling side has made it a more cohesive experience and yet still maintains the sandbox-style of its predecessor. In fact, be sure to pay close attention to the writing. It felt like it was done in the same spirit as the Mad Libs series of word-game books and is sure to break out the laughs more often than not. If you liked A Kingdom For Keflings, you’ll love A World Of Keflings.