Kingdom (browser game)

## Game rating

***Kingdom*** was firstly released on October 2013 as browser game.
Developed by Thomas van den Berg (also known as Noio), the title was a free to play game that used to run on all popular browsers until late 2020.

The browser game started as a Noio's personal project to learn horse animations, and ended up serving as the pilot project for the *Steam* game that would be released a couple of years later.

The game is still available to be played online on the same original site maintained by its creator.

## Description by Noio

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>  | I'm working on a tiny little game called "Kingdom", you play as a king on a horse, who controls his minions by giving them coins I guess.—First comment on devlog  | „
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I'm working on a tiny little game called "Kingdom", you play as a king on a horse, who controls his minions by giving them coins I guess.First comment on devlog

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>  | Gameplay will be really simple, you 'feed' coins to your citizens, which allows them to defend and expand your little settlement/citadel. At night there will be attacks that you have to surve.—Follow-up comment devlog  | „
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Gameplay will be really simple, you 'feed' coins to your citizens, which allows them to defend and expand your little settlement/citadel. At night there will be attacks that you have to surve.Follow-up comment devlog

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> A wise King knows that his kingdom will fall.
> A brave King does not despair.
> A great King knows that his riches can rule,
> But spends every penny with care.
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A wise King knows that his kingdom will fall.

A brave King does not despair.

A great King knows that his riches can rule,

But spends every penny with care.

Original game site

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>  | Recruit citizens to defend you as the trolls try to steal your stuff at night.—NewGrounds  | „
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Recruit citizens to defend you as the trolls try to steal your stuff at night.NewGrounds
## Primitive gameplay

The flash version is mostly a rudimentary verion of the first *Kingdom* game released on *Steam*.

* There is no game menu, and no way to pause the game.
* Monarch is always a King (never a Queen).
* There is no second faster horse to switch to.
* The horse can get tired, and eat grass to recover stamina, but it cannot run.
* There are no builders. Farmers will work on farm fields, and on the walls.
* There are no trees to be cut down.
* Farm fields are already buit from the beginning.
* There are no camps for beggars to appear. The randomly pop up anywhere, as they will.

* There are only two types of monsters: the smaller ones, and the bigger ones.
* The small monsters usually have only 1 health point (seems to increase to a couple in late game). They can jump over the walls.
* The big monsters cannot jump, but have incomparably more health points.
* There are no monster portals, and no way to destroy their original nest.
* The game initially says the player has to survive 10 nights, but it's possible to survive well more than that.
* There is no way to definitely win the game.

## It's still playable

Although modern browsers no longer support the plugins required to run this type of game, the Noio's site still provides the game for those who have the required tools on their devices.

The following instructions show how the game can still be played.
An old version of Firefox packaged with an older Flash player can be downloaded via One Drive.
It's a 172 MB zip file, that becomes a 460 MB folder when uncompressed.

Once launched (through its executable file `FirefoxPortable.exe`), the user should be able to visit the site and play the game.
If they receive a warning about the plugin being outdated, they can simply click on "Allow" to run it anyway.

 Note that the instructions provided on this section specifically refer to the links provided on this page only.
Users should not use this portable browser to visit any other types of sites, or run any other types of flash applications.

## Videos

Kingdom - gameplay on browser
More videos on this Youtube channel.

## References

1. ↑ PEz on *SoundCloud*.
2. ↑ **“***It's done.***”**—Developer Noio on a devlog called "Kingdom" on *TIGSource* forums. (ARCHIVED). 15 October 2013.
3. ↑ Noio/Kingdom: A minimal game. The game repository on *GitHub*.
4. ↑ Browser game on *Wikipedia*.
5. ↑ Adobe Flash Player on *Wikipedia*.
6. ↑ History of Kingdom. *`kingdomthegame.com`*
7. ↑ Pilot experiment on *Wikipedia*.
8. ↑ First comments by the game creator on *TIGSource* forums. 24 January 2013.
9. ↑ First comments by the game creator on *TIGSource* forums. 31 January 2013.
10. ↑ `kingdom.noio.nl`
11. ↑ `NewGrounds.com`
12. ↑ Adobe Flash Player § End of life on *Wikipedia*.
13. ↑ The full description of the file can be found on this *Reddit* post.
On 6 July 2023, the whole folder was downloaded and scanned with Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, which found zero threats.