Biggest discounts, free games, and limited-time offers across every major gaming store.
Never pay full price again.
Overview
Kingdom: New Lands is a side-scrolling strategy and simulation game where a lone monarch on horseback must build, defend, and ultimately escape a series of mysterious islands. The core loop is deceptively tight: ride across the land, spend coins to recruit subjects and erect defenses, then survive the nightly waves of greedy creatures that pour in from the edges of the map. Released in August 2016 by developer Licorice and publisher Raw Fury, it builds directly on the original Kingdom with a substantial injection of new content while keeping the minimalist design philosophy intact.
What makes the game work is how much tension it wrings from so little. There are no menus cluttered with stats, no skill trees, no dialogue boxes. Communication happens entirely through visual cues and sound. A coin glows near a vagrant and you know what to do. The greedy surge at dusk and the weight of every missed opportunity during the day hits immediately.
Kingdom: New Lands content image
The islands themselves are procedurally varied, meaning no two runs play out identically. Each one has a boat to repair and eventually sail to the next land, so progress is always forward, never static. Lose your crown and it's over.
Gameplay and mechanics
The moment-to-moment gameplay centers on resource management and spatial decision-making:
Kingdom: New Lands content image
- Recruit archers, builders, and knights by spending coins
- Expand your walls outward to claim more territory
- Unlock and upgrade structures like farms, towers, and catapults
- Manage your mount's stamina as you traverse the island
- Prepare a boat to sail to the next island before resources run dry
The left-right traversal sounds limiting but creates genuine strategic pressure. You can only be in one place at a time, and the greedy attack from both sides. Deciding where to spend your morning coins before the sun drops is the game's central drama.
Kingdom: New Lands content image
What sets Kingdom: New Lands apart from the original?
New Lands is not a minor update. It introduces new mounts with distinct abilities, new merchant types, environmental hazards that can wipe out progress independent of creature attacks, and the multi-island structure that replaces the single-map survival of the original. The game also carries IGF nomination credentials, which reflects the design quality that earned the series its reputation.
The new mounts are worth highlighting specifically. Each one changes how you interact with the map, from faster traversal to special abilities that affect combat or resource gathering. Finding and unlocking them on each island adds a layer of discovery that keeps runs feeling fresh.
Visual and audio design
The pixel art is sparse and purposeful. Sunsets bleed orange across the sky as the greedy begin to stir. The silhouetted forest and the flickering torchlight of your walls create a mood that punches well above the game's technical weight. It looks simple and reads instantly, which is exactly the point.
The audio design follows the same logic. The ambient soundtrack shifts with the time of day, building dread as night approaches. Sound cues replace UI feedback almost entirely, so you learn to listen for danger as much as watch for it.
Kingdom: New Lands content image
Content and replayability
Kingdom: New Lands is available across PC, consoles, and mobile platforms, making it one of the more accessible entries in the kingdom-building strategy genre. The roguelite structure means death sends you back to the beginning, but knowledge carries over. Learning which upgrades to prioritize, which vagrants to recruit first, and how to read the greedy's escalating attack patterns is what separates a short run from a successful escape.
The multi-island progression gives the game a clear arc that the original lacked. Each island is harder, stranger, and more demanding than the last. That structure, combined with procedural variation and a handful of unlockable mounts and secrets, gives the game meaningful replay depth for a title this compact.