9 Kings (Early Access)

9 Kings was provided by Hooded Horse for review. Thank you!

As an Early Access title, gameplay and performance is subject to change.

9 Kings had an impressive showing in Steam Next Fest, and so far, it's living up to expectations. 9 Kings is a roguelite kingdom builder from Sad Sockets, blending card game mechanics with an auto-battler combat system as the player builds up their realm to become the King of Kings, and it has rapidly become my go-to game when I need to unwind with some simple, good old-fashioned battles to the death against my lesser rivals. That may sound bloodthirsty, but everyone needs a hobby, don’t they?

Despite its depth, 9 Kings is deceptively simple on the surface. As the player takes control of one of several kings, they slowly develop their bastion of defense on a grid map, placing down buildings and units to survive 33 years of growing bloodshed. The straightforward gameplay mechanics make it easy to grasp, even for those new to the genre.

The visuals are just like the gameplay in minimalist pixel art, and while you can’t get a sense of the endless battles that take place, each building and unit feels distinctive enough not to get confusing. It might look like stick figures drawn by bored infants in a nursery, but I find the graphics quite striking. It gives 9 Kings a unique flavor.

Players will start with the King of Nothing, who is the bog standard ‘vanilla’ monarch, and you unlock other kings through gameplay. While each of the king's decks is unique, there are numerous enchantments and spells shared between the card pool, allowing for extensive experimentation. Every round won will enable you to select a new card from a randomized pool, and some rounds will offer artifacts that provide permanent boosts for the current run.

Things can quickly get out of hand in all the best ways. I enjoy mixing up my army lineups with a tanky unit up front, supported by ranged units and fortifications. Even the Zerg swarm units are effective: they might die faster than a Samsung phone’s battery life, but they soak up enemy damage while your spells and odd building defenses break them down.

There is limited space to develop your defenses, and while you can unlock more plots over time, you only have so much room to build. The best way forward is to upgrade your plots, which is a straightforward process where you simply drop the same card as the plot, causing them to merge. You can also boost numbers this way or with additional buildings, such as the Farm. I liked using the Farm with one of my stronger melee units to pump their numbers every turn. Some buildings can also convert enemy units into spores or goblin creatures that fight for you. There are numerous combinations that synergize well with each other, which further encourages experimentation.

The challenge ramps up nicely the longer you play. A few times, I lost a run early on because I chose my army lineup poorly and got smashed by the invaders, and I often found myself barely clawing through battles. You don’t get any warning in advance of what army composition is next, although you do know which King is the next unlucky sod to dare attack you. If you win a run, you get the option to continue in an endless mode that brings increasingly massive armies to fight. Between those unlockable perks and several kings, 9 Kings boasts a lot of content for the price tag.

In terms of performance, 9 Kings is a lightweight game that benefits from its minimalist visual design choices. This is just as well because there is a disappointing variety of options that can be tweaked. Regardless, it plays reasonably well on all systems, from PCs to handhelds, and its modest requirements work solidly for the most part.

It’s not perfect. When armies consisted of hundreds and thousands of soldiers per side, I observed some performance drops across all hardware. Endless mode was where I saw the most performance gremlins, and I experienced a few crashes here and there. 9 Kings is in Early Access and has received some decent patches already, with a big performance patch in the works.

This is a great game when you want to unwind, and the gameplay loop is both relaxing and absorbing enough to keep me engaged. It takes a lot of skill to develop a game that looks so simple on the surface but hides a deep ocean of mechanics beneath, and 9 Kings fulfills that rather nicely.

9 Kings - Steam Deck Performance

9 Kings is an enjoyable experience on the Steam Deck despite lacking native controller support. While it lacks any graphical settings beyond adjusting the screen resolution, 9 Kings works well right out of the box. It performs well with standard settings on the OLED Steam Deck: 1280x800 resolution, unlocked TDP, and 90Hz refresh rate. Despite the lack of gamepad support, the Keyboard WASD and Mouse controller configuration achieves everything you need in terms of controls. As 9 Kings is an autobattler with point-and-click controls, I found these more than sufficient.

Recommended Settings

Despite the lack of options available to us, 9 Kings requires very little. Even with standard settings and an unlocked TDP, it maintains a stable frame rate. I recommend keeping a 60 FPS/60 Hz refresh rate, as I found little benefit in exceeding it. 

The game does not require a lot of power. Our only in-game tools for managing performance are limiting the frame rate and screen resolution; however, the Steam Deck offers a wide range of options in its toolbox. Even with an unlocked TDP and 60 FPS, I found the game to consume an average of around 8 watts of power. With the Steam Deck OLED, I managed over 6 hours of battery life. When deep into Endless mode, the power draw spiked a little bit, but nothing significant.

Battery Saver Settings

If you prefer, you can achieve longer battery life by limiting the framerate to 30 FPS, which still provides solid performance and over 8 hours of battery life. Running at the minimum power does cause a couple of frame drops when a lot is happening on screen, but I was impressed by how nicely 9 Kings scales. The savings, although real, are not yet substantial.

Some text can be tricky to read due to the small font size, especially in the settings menu. While this is a problem, I did not find the small text size as problematic as it is in other games.

Accessibility

9 Kings is playable in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukrainian, Portuguese (Brazil), and Traditional Chinese, and many more. With no voice acting required, all critical information, including achievements, should be included in these translations, and it's fantastic.

While the language support is awe-inspiring, 9 Kings has limited accessibility options. There are some options, however. You can adjust the volume and screen resolution, toggle full-screen mode, limit the frame rate, skip building animations, adjust battle speed, and turn off blood and screen shake effects.

There are no color-blind options, font size options, or options to invert the X and Y axes. All text is eligible on the Steam Deck, although I would like to increase the font size. Some of the text is small for my aging eyes.

Conclusion

9 Kings is a fascinating little game and surprisingly deep for an auto battler. I only got to play the demo for a short while during Next Fest, but it left me excited to try out the whole game. Sad Sockets is a creative name for a dev team, but we don’t win awards for ‘awesome developer team names,’ sadly. The games are what matter, and 9 Kings offers a lot for its cheap price tag. Some aspects need improvement, such as performance in later stages, but so far, I am impressed by what I have seen, especially on Steam Deck.

It is early days yet, and Early Access is always a gamble, but 9 Kings will not disappoint you.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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