Be a King: Lost Lands
Today’s game is new to the giveaway project. The downloaded zip file is 25.4Mb and the installed game expands to 27.8Mb. Unfortunately the ????? still persists, but the game installs with no problems by clicking on the lowermost button to the left. As usual with Game giveaways there's no shortcut installed so make a note of where it's being installed to. The default is C:\Games\To be a King. If you've not cleared your internet cache for a while you may find it tries to install itself to a previous giveaway; for me it tried to install to Nitroracers (I didn't bother installing yesterdays game on this computer because I still had the original which was a later version). Once you've located the installed game open it up and select the games executable which is within the first folder (not common). If you want to create a desktop and start menu shortcut I've created a short tutorial which can be found
Introduction:
28th March: We released a new version (1.2) of Be a King - Lost Lands! This update includes one new map with 12 levels and two new buildings.This update is free for Be a King owners!
Try to rule your land as the prince. Build and maintain villages, towns and even big cities! Defend your minions against hordes of monsters and bandits. Be a just and determined ruler, and realize the dream of becoming a brave king who leads his people to a better future!
"Be a King" is a fantasy strategy game. It offers fast and entertaining game play for all players. You - as a ruler of a medieval kingdom - must build towns and cities, defend them against raiders and perform various objectives. Enjoy the medieval atmosphere in lovely fantasy graphics!
Ref: http://www.300ad.com/be_a_king.php accessed 20th Nov 09
The Game:
This is an excellent mix of time management, strategy, building and tower defense, with over 25 levels to work through. To make the game more challenging you can toggle time limits to complete each level (which is where the time management comes in). The game is set to untimed as default. To change between timed and untimed toggle the tick box that you can find to the top left of the levels map.
The aim of the game is to build towns and cities using the available resources at hand, and defend them against raiders, monsters attacking from outside the town and thieves from within the town’s community. Throughout the game you will be given various quests to complete which give you gold and other bonuses which can be used to buy more resources so that you can expand your towns population by building more houses to live in, building food production facilities such as farms to feed your population, service buildings such as mills, inns, traders and bakeries to increase food production, and military buildings to defend and protect your population. To build these facilities you will require resources such as wood and stone which can be bough using the gold you earn by fulfilling tasks and killing enemies. All buildings require some measure of these resources plus more gold and people to build the property. You need to juggle the types of buildings you create so as to maximize all aspects of the games resources for example you should ensure you have enough homes to house the population, enough military installations to protect your homes and enough service installations to ensure a profit is made. No profit and you may run out of gold to create the necessary buildings that are required to complete a level. Sometimes it may be necessary to demolish a building so that you can utilize the resources that you gain from doing this. All buildings can be upgraded. There are three levels of upgrading available.
Once you have barracks built you can hire heroes to complete quest and random events as well as help to defend your town from monsters. Each military installation acts as a tower defense, though for outside attackers you require mage towers as barracks are less effective against outside attackers. The following are suggested tips to help you win levels:
Tips:
• Watch for advice from the in game advisor. He is situated at the bottom right of the screen. If you want to read the previous message click on the button provide
• Build barracks or mage towers as soon as possible to protect your town
• Barracks protect your town against street crime but are not as effective against attackers from outside If you don’t have enough money to improve your defenses you can destroy unused buildings to create space for more protection and gain money from the resources created from the destroyed building.
• You can send a hero to kill monsters or raiders, but these can be lost.
• Complete random quests because these can bring in much needed resources and random bonuses
• Build buildings that make you a lot of money first as this will make game play easier later in the game.
• The more raw materials you buy in a single deal the bigger the discount you get
• Mini Objectives windows show your goals and your active stats in brackets.
The game starts with three tutorial levels the first one tells you how to create buildings
To the upper right of the screen you’ll occasionally see an advisor pop up with useful advice about what tasks require completing as well as useful information to complete missions that you may be involved in.
To the bottom of the playing area is the information panel that contains four tabs. These are:
1. info
2. material
3. workers
4. building.
The info tab shows all of the important data about the town such as the total population, growth rate, income and the number of people your town can adequately feed and protect. To the right of this information you’ll find what your current tasks are, for example in one of the initial tutorial levels you have to create a farm and ensure there is enough housing to allow 15 subjects to live in your town. The materials tab shows the different materials that are available to buy. Buying in bulk gets you more materials for your gold, so if you have enough it’s worth purchasing the larger amounts. The workers tab enables you to hire workers to build specific buildings, and once you own barracks you can hire heroes Each building requires different numbers of builders which can be hires via this panel. , the final tab shows you the different types of buildings available as well as upgrades when you select individual buildings. Upgraded buildings house more people and earn higher rents. To build a building you first need to select an empty building plot from the game arena.
I’ve taken screenshots of all three tutorial levels which was over 100 images. You can either see these all on one page or as a slide show. Watching the slideshow can give you a good grounding in the game, however you will see the same tutorial while playing the game for the first time. Each level can be replayed at any time once it’s been unlocked. The tutorials have to be played before you can unlock later levels. However, there is a levels unlocker available though at this point I don’t know whether it will work with the version we are getting. I’ll be able to report on that later once I’ve installed the full version. That said, the game has been designed to introduce you to the various aspects of the game in a logical way, so jumping ahead to later levels may mean you miss some important information that will help you make the most of the resources that are available. :)
Game features:
Play 25 + 12 original levels
Use 7 + 2 different types of buildings to grow your cities
Upgrade the buildings - each building has 3 variants
Defend your minions against hordes of monsters and bandits
Fulfill different types of objectives
Train heroes and complete complex adventurous quests
Minimum requirements:
PC Windows or Mac OS X 10.3+
1GHz, 128MB RAM
OpenGL
Conclusion:
Overall this is a game worth having in your games library. The game play isn’t too hard nor too easy and with an in depth tutorial system, even newbie’s to gaming should find the game relatively easy to play. I like the conglomeration of several types of games that have been incorporated into this game. There’s enough game play to keep you going for a couple of days at least though that depends upon how you play the game. I do think it’s a little prescriptive, but I will be keeping it for the occasional moments when I fancy this type of game. Well worth 7 out of 10 in my opinion.
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Resources:
Videos and Images:
You can see in game footage by watching a couple of videos of the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBx4jnxs19A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJinB3IlMk
Google Images:
http://images.google.co.uk/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=Be+a+King%3A+Lost+Lands+game&aq=f&oq=&start=0
Screen captures all on one page:
As a slideshow:
Reviews worth reading:
http://www.gamezebo.com/games/be-king/review
Level Unlocker:
You can get a level unlocker for this game that unlocks all the levels:
This will unlock all the levels if you used it corectly: when you have selected your character, but before you start the game hit F12, then hit start game, you will then go to the screenthat shows all your missions to complete, now they are all available to access. Now before you pick the mission you want to play you must turn the cheat off by hitting F12 again.
http://games.softpedia.com/get/Cheat-Solutions/Be-a-King-Lost-Land-1-2-Level-Unlocker.shtml
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