Released on Apple Arcade on January 17th, Kings of the Castle is a solid and enjoyable first-person parkour game. The pitch for Kings of the Castle is straightforward – it’s a multiplayer parkour racing game, like if Mirrors Edge met Mario Kart. Or more accurately, since this is Apple Arcade territory, imagine the ramping speed of Hot Lava with the competitive racing of Sonic Racer.
I’ll be honest, the game’s developer Frostypop Games kind of surprised me with this one. Kings of the Castle is a remarkably well-designed racing game. The controls feel responsive, and the game’s art style is consistently cute, and the game is simply very fun. Unfortunately, the simplicity of the game began to dampen my enjoyment as I progressed. At launch, Kings of the Castle feels like the bare bones of what could be an excellent game.
There are two maps at present, and both are wide open with a plethora of routes to take. We can choose to either collect a set number of points scattered around each level or run through a timed gauntlet. But the thing is, while we have time trials and multiplayer races, the effort the developer’s spent designing these beautiful levels feels almost frustratingly pointless. This is because there aren’t any specific challenges for us to work through.
If Frostypop Games can get a little more creative with an achievement system to challenge returning players, I believe Kings of the Castle could easily become one of the most popular racing games on the Apple Arcade platform. The developer has promised to regularly release new maps, so hopefully they can add some more specific challenges as well.
Kings of the Castle was played on a 7th Generation 2019 iPad with an Xbox One controller on Apple Arcade. I’d love to hear your thoughts about Kings of the Castle and my review on it. Tweet at me!
IndieSamAdonis 