The King Got Too Much Gold – Review
We’ve all seen games that try to reinvent the wheel, but The King Got Too Much Gold tries to reinvent the chore. Stepping away from the usual bullet-hell chaos of the modern Survivors-like genre, this minimalist indie title trades waves of deadly monsters for an overwhelming flood of shiny currency and menial tasks. It’s an intriguing twist on a familiar formula, but the question is whether this royal cleaning simulator manages to strike it rich or if it’s just fool’s gold.
Story
It’s good to be the King. Or it would be, if the fountain in your meadow would stop spitting out gold. Someone needs to clean it up, and that someone is… the King himself. Armed with a trusty magnet and a coin purse, His Majesty takes it upon himself to keep everything spic and span. As nonsensical as this may sound, this is the entirety of The King Got Too Much Gold’s premise.
Graphics
The vast majority of The King Got Too Much Gold consists of simple, color-coded blocks and simple pixel art designs. Even the king himself is a big purple cube, albeit one wearing a crown. The designs may not impress anyone, but they are functional enough. We were surprised how quickly we were on board with how the game’s art direction went for readability over memorable designs. An otherwise featureless green square? Yeah, that’s a regular Goblin, alright. A green square with yellow pixels? That’s the Treasure Goblin! (Quick, chase it!) In addition to these abstract depictions of fantasy archetypes, the game makes use of more detailed pixel art for in-game trading cards, although it’s worth noting that the art for these is AI-generated rather than hand-drawn. The game’s lightweight visuals ensure that performance is buttery smooth too. As the game’s Steam page itself puts it, the game should be able to run on everything.
Sound
A single chiptune track plays on repeat in the background. The music doesn’t seamlessly loop either. Instead, there is an awkward moment of silence every time the track ends before it restarts. The music isn’t particularly memorable or even fitting for the fantasy setting. It’s just kind of there. Sound effects are mostly as minimalistic as the visuals, with a handful of exceptions: the growling of the trolls gives them some character at least, and the maniacal laughter that accompanies the Treasure Goblin is just attention-grabbing enough that we instantly started chasing it every time it spawned.
Gameplay
From Vikings to Dino-Ducks and everything in between, we’ve played our share of Vampire Survivors-likes over the last few years. For the most part, they differed in their theming, with only minor changes to the core gameplay formula. The King Got Too Much Gold is the first Survivors-like we’ve played that actually shakes things up significantly. By moving away from bullet hell gameplay and waves upon waves of enemies, the game feels very different. Even so, enough of the Survivors framework remains to keep things recognizable to anyone who has ever played another entry in the genre. You play as the King, but the only thing you directly control is where he moves. All your other actions are automated, just like you’d auto-attack in a Survivors-like game. You’re not fighting off enemies though, but are preventing your surroundings from becoming flooded with pieces of gold. A fountain continuously generates gold pieces and treasure boxes, and it’s up to you to gather as much of it as you can carry, drag it to your castle, and sell it. Once you meet a certain threshold, you’ll level up and are able to pick an upgrade from a random set of three.
Upgrades range from increases to speed and carry capacity to automated followers that help you gather gold and level up quicker. Goblins will smash treasure boxes, trolls throw gold to your castle from range, and cats chase after thieves, to name a few. The King Got Too Much Gold is an exercise in efficiency, in that the target required to level up keeps growing exponentially, but your growing roster of followers and direct upgrades to the King himself ensure you can keep up. In addition to the randomised upgrades you get from levelling up, there is also a skill tree with passive boosts that you unlock with skill points. You can earn these in a variety of ways, including by levelling up, but perhaps the most significant source of skill points is the Treasure Goblin. This critter pops up every once in a while, at which point you’re supposed to chase it and make it drop rare goodies, including the aforementioned points as well as collectible trading cards. The Treasure Goblin isn’t the only random spawn either, as thieves and other threats occasionally appear. If you’ve built up the right defenses though, such as trolls, then they barely pose a threat at all.
That does bring us to what is perhaps the biggest issue with The King Got Too Much Gold: it is far too easy, especially because of how slow-paced it is overall. Our first run effortlessly got us to level 30 before we simply… grew bored of it. There are 100 levels, after which you unlock an Endless Mode. With there being no timer, death, or fail state, reaching level 100 to see the credits roll becomes an inevitable chore rather than a challenge. It’s fun for about thirty minutes or so, but ultimately, the game starts to feel pointless. At the time of writing, the Steam launch of The King Got Too Much Gold is still quite some time away, and pricing isn’t known just yet, so we can’t say if the price is right. There is a free demo available over on itch.io, however, so you can give the game a try before deciding whether or not it’s worth your actual gold.
Conclusion
For the first half hour, we were on board with The King Got Too Much Gold. Its unique take on the Survivors-like genre made it interesting enough to check out, and the game’s minimalistic presentation worked well enough to support the gameplay. As we kept playing, however, the game’s slow pacing and lack of challenge started to bore us. This is a good example of a game that simply overstays its welcome and, in turn, squanders its potential.
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