Kingsway Critic Reviews

I enjoyed the novelty of the interface along with the ability to experiment with maximizing different character classes. There are some genuinely cool moments that harken back to classic RPGs, especially around the boss fights. Because of the threat of perma-death, they felt especially tense and I had to psych myself up before I took on the Big Bad. Despite some repetitive content, the overall experience was fresh and fun.

Like all successful pieces of nostalgia, Kingsway knows the adventure on the screen is less important than the adventure in your mind. Kingsway took me far down those winding paths, deeper and deeper with each hesitant chitter of nonexistent hardware.

Kingsway goes beyond being just a throwback to the past, and proves itself an entertaining game in its own right.

The gimmick of Kingsway is rather glorious, but the grandeur fades quickly as you take up your sword and staff for the third or forth completion run. The novelty of Kingsway is quite potent, but it just doesn’t have any staying power. As something to hammer out in a day and put down never to play again, it’s a fun diversion – but don’t count on it to keep you exploring the ever-changing island for much longer than that.

A fun procedurally generated rpg adventure with a punishing difficulty that will require multiple playthroughs.

Goodness me, Kingsway is clever. It’s clever in so, so many ways. It’s clever in its absolutely spectacular presentation, but it’s far too clever to let that just be a gimmick – its peculiar appearance as a mid-90s Windows desktop could so easily have been a cute idea that hid an ordinary roguelite RPG, but instead it so very brilliantly influences how you play, and indeed the foibles of such an interface become crucial to how you experience it. It’s also really bloody tough.