Ruling a kingdom seems like hard work, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be too complicated. City builders and strategy games tend to be complex by nature, demanding that players adapt to difficult rules and detailed interfaces from the very beginning. But they don’t always have to follow that pattern, as demonstrated by a new Xbox Game Pass addition that takes the simpler form of a side-scrolling game.
In 2015, players were introduced to Kingdom, a strategy game that follows a king establishing their two-dimensional domain on horseback. A sequel, Kingdom: New Lands, followed the next year, but the series really hit its stride with 2018’s Kingdom Two Crowns. Initially intended as a DLC for New Lands, Two Crowns builds on the solid foundations of its predecessors, while also being the first game in the series to feature a multiplayer mode.
