9 Kings

I really, really want to love this game so much. The premise is fantastic, the general game play loop is incredible, but the simulation engine and it's math is beyond broken and unfair. You are never rewarded for your decisions due to a fundamentally buggy simulation. For example, the King of Greed's special starting power is a building that, each time it attacks, does Infinite damage to a single unit. This means it insta-kills a single unit. It starts off with a pretty low attack speed, once every few seconds. However, via another building's power, you can speed up this main building to the point where it attacks billions of times a second and beyond. By the simple numbers, it should wipe out an enemy army of 1000 units instantly. What it does instead is slows down the simulation significantly, making it so you don't attack anywhere near as fast as the numbers say you do. The game needs a better mechanism for scaling unit and damage numbers overall, without trying to render each individual unit. This would mean a single on-screen unit would initially represent 1 unit, then maybe 10, then 100, etc. This would "scale" the game without crushing the CPU for animations, and in turn would allow for a decoupled simulation engine. It's a fun game, but ultimately, until simulation is fixed, you are punished for being too good at it. I'd wait until it's fixed before you buy.

9 Kings is simply amazing, probably my favorite game from a Brazilian studio to this date! In this strategy roguelike, you need to defend your kingdom from the attacks of other kingdoms, and to do that you have to use cards to place buildings that either generate units to fight for you or towers that can decimate enemies from afar. Even though 9 Kings is a roguelike with cards, it is not a deckbuilder roguelike as there is no deck (or rather, the deck is fixed so there's no actual deck building), but it still has the common sinergies between combinations of kingdoms and such, and it is incredibly fun. The only pet peeve, at least from the last time I played, is that the game is way too reliant on the Blacksmith card to upgrade the damage of adjacent units, probably the most overused card in the whole game. I do think that things should be balanced a little bit more throughout, but my experience was great so far! If you're feeling like you're totally in boredom and wanna try something fun and cheap, I cannot recommend 9 Kings enough, king!

Wonderful Tower Defense/RTS style strategy game that also has elements of Rogue Like to. Unique game that has fun gameplay and a retro indie look to the graphics/art style. Runs on my Steam Deck and on my Desktop, will be playing lot's of this the next while forsure. One of the more unique games of the year so far. Only played 1 hour but I can see myself coming back to this often in the future. I have done 2 runs so far and had a blast! Already one of my favorites of 2025 so far.

Great game. Very easy to get lost in for hours. Somehow casual and hardcore at the same time. I'm having a blast with it. Cant wait for more kings and the other game modes to be added!!

I think this is a pretty decent game overall, but I think there are too little upgrades available. You get all these little upgrades for levelling up the king, These upgrades just don't feel satisfying enough. There might be more interesting upgrades further along, but since I can't see them, there isn't a sense of anticipation. Also, it's annoying that you have to start from scratch when you unlock a new king. I wish there's an overall progression that buffs everyone and help you start winning more sooner. Also, I'd rather have new units/buildings as progression unlockables than unexciting stats like 10% damage or 5% health. These worthless stat boosts really make it unmotivating to grind.

game is great. it is not really balanced, but that one of the things that makes it fun.

fun strategy game with tower defense and rpg elements

It is fun for a while and when you need to kill some time. Heavily unbalanced tho and some kings are simply not viable at all. You can play all of them to Lv33 tho and they do say that the "endless" mode is experimental

Really fun game, worth the money. It'll devour hours of your time if you're not paying attention.

A very average autobattler with minimal gameplay. For early access it's ok, but overall there's very little content. I recommend waiting and watching the development

Numbers get bigger. eventually they got too big for my computer. Would crash again 10/10.

It's a fine time waster I guess, but right now it feels like the game "cheats" to make sure you don't hit the ultimate goal of year 200. The damage of the attacking troops ramps up so sharply that it in reality means there's only a few legitimate strategies you can employ. Not to spoil the trial-and-error experience for anyone, but in my best run, my frontline troop had 322,475,487,413.60 HP—322 Billion HP rounded down, and it was getting deleted in less than a second. I'm not sure what I could have possibly done to make that troop survive longer since, statistically speaking, doubling it's HP would only make it survive for 1 second longer... and I was on the second easiest difficulty btw. It's neat, but the limited viable strategies and the wildly uncontrolled growth of enemy troops make the game feel stale and almost pointless to play respectively.

Haven't playend anything in years but saw a video of 9 kings and it seemed fun. I bought the game and got immediately hooked. This game did what no other really could, it captivates me and wants to make me play it more. Thanks for designing such a great game. I would love to maybe see some kind of multiplayer co-op in the future :)

The game is pretty easy to win especially with some scaling tower. to have a chance at endless you need to have had started with towers scaling your troops very early on. The SFX is too much, all the combat sounds add together to make a single bad sound even if its volume has been set to low. I would wait for it to be released before you give it a try

This is not balanced very well and it's very hard not to win a run. I'm not sure they can balance their way out of that. But an easy win once in a while can be fun! So as long as you don't strongly need a challenge, I think it's a fine way to unwind.

Until they fix the difficulty scaling I don't recommend this game. At lower difficulties you can try out different strategies and mess around a lot. Once you hit king 6-7 that changes. If you don't hit specific things by about turn 5 you might as well reset cause you will lose. Maybe they will change it in the future but until that point it's not worth playing.

Recently I played an RTS game with dozens of clans, but all of them had the same skills and perks, so you just followed the same boring strategy over and over. Not here! Developers really managed to create different kings, with unique cards and abilities, leading to a variety of strategies. Plus, the game is constantly being updated with promised releases throughout the year That's a good game, and the price is excellent!

This is a really fun and engaging tower defence game that reminds me of all the ones we used to play on Armor Games and Kongregate. It's really easy to get into, the RNG is fair, and the difficulty's balanced. The only criticism I have of it is that when defending against the King of Spells, thieve units that would normally attack the rearguard end up right in the midst of the warlocks and are immediately obliterated. Also arrows from the forest bowman attack the wizards, but not the furthest most shamans, so at higher levels the wizards quickly get too buff to defeat and end up overrunning my defences. Overall: a very fun game with great potential.

9 Kings is very fun and on the path to success through its early access. The game has a fun and snappy base that adds complexity layer by layer. Choosing your opponents wisely so you can gain their rewards without being defeated, planning out your units and buildings with limited space and unknown rewards ahead, wisely targeting with your base's attack, and managing your gold across rerolls and shops all combine to make a fun, quick, but surprisingly deep experience. The quirks of the many units of the game (stuff beyond their displayed stats like their speed, their starting position, their target priorities, their attack methods, their unit numbers, etc.) make planning your army very satisfying. The roadmap ahead teases exciting things to come, like new kings, cards, and gamemodes, so definitely keep an eye on this game even if you don't hop on now/ Since the devs seem to be reading the reviews, I'll make a list of some of my current issues with the game: -The final assault/boss battle is terrible. You either one shot it in like 3 seconds or have the world's longest most protracted battle with it, sometimes culminating in an instant loss at the end if the boss out DPS's your troops after all its troops are gone. The boss wave seems to nerf your damage/attack speed and may nerf other stats behind the scenes, and that's lame. I literally just had a run with poison defenders today that went from wiping the wave before effortlessly to struggling to deal with the boss wave's troops and dealing a fraction of the poison they were the wave before. There's no way to anticipate what boss you'll get or to know if you'll have difficulty with it or run it over. -Some values are hidden or pointlessly inflated. Values like move speed are not shown despite being modifiable, and some values like attack speed get pointlessly inflated. In a recent patch, the notes said that attack speed over a certain amount is converted to damage "on the back end" but attack speed can still reach silly numbers like 3.456+e11 and none of that conversion is shown. Knowing where the caps are and how things function would avoid the fairly common sad newbie moment of "why is my 5 trillion hits per second dispenser losing to endless mode year 60". In the same vein, what is a tower, summon, or construction is not super clear, and clearing this terminology up would help with selecting perks and understanding buff interactions. -Endless mode needs some extra spice even if the jank does get ironed out. -The prophecy system is a cool idea but very half baked and doesn't seem to account for how the game is actually played. 75% of the time it blesses tiles I am not planning around and there's usually not much point in getting the blessing active unless it randomly works out with how you build your plots. There's also not very many of blessings in the pool.

A simple, fun, and addictive roguelite / autobattler!

Fun game, I wish the match ended at higher stages instead of letting you keep going, because you never want to stop the match and you end up playing dozens of very easy rounds and all of a sudden the next round the enemy crushes you

I would definitely recommend this game even while it is still in early access. This game is worth your time and money which is hard to find in this day and age. I am very satisfied with my purchase and am waiting for the DLC and part two Yes: - Pretty solid for an early access game and well worth the money. - While the RNG can be annoying at times it still mostly comes down to strategy and I love that about this game. - This is a great starter game for people who like this category of game. No: - Minor glitches and bugs but this is still early access I believe. - N/A - N/A Achievements: All achievements work at the time of this review. Most of the achievements were easy to obtain and there are walkthroughs for the more problematic ones. Huh: - The average height for men in Australia is 5 ft 10 inches. - Full Metal Jacket is the most common type of ammunition. - Bumblebees prefer flowers that are blue or violet, not because of the color but because those flowers tend to be more nectar rich.

Currently this game is quite easy, but i can see alot of potential here and the dev is working hard, hope to see this game improve further down the road!

[h1] amazing game, lots of different playstyles, good re-playbility, gets kinda hard [/h1] went to year thousand on king difficulty, my pc isn't that good just turn some effects off (blood and damage indicator, i went past year 100 with that on and only started losing fps then, since you only need to get to year 30smth to win it doesn't really affect you if you aren't going for crazy stuff) and you are fine, dunno why the dmg scaling ends at 300ish E, [u] would love to have multiple runs at once since i don't want to loose my run and i don't think it'll ever end, [/u] gonna push my attack speed to NaN aswell and probably end the run (i wanna play normally again:( ) it doesn't seem like the bot scaling will ever catch up. (wich is weird since the game was smth like 'it will surely catch up you, you sure you wanna waste your time?') the damage indicator is capped at 2,15E+9 wich is kinda weird? [h2] highly recomend getting it and excited for the new king[/h2]

I bought 9 Kings because I was looking for a strategy game with depth and something a bit different from the mainstream. After around 5 hours of gameplay, here’s my fair and honest review: Gameplay & Mechanics Set in a medieval world where nine kings compete for power, the game combines kingdom management, diplomacy, and warfare. You must carefully manage your resources, expand territory, negotiate alliances, or wage war. What I liked: Each king has a unique style and bonuses, which keeps the experience fresh each time. The game has real strategic depth — nothing feels too simple or predictable. Things That Need Improvement: Inconsistent AI behavior: Some AI rulers are overly passive, while others attack aggressively without clear logic. Lack of proper tutorials: The game does a poor job explaining its systems. New players will feel lost. Cluttered and outdated UI: As your kingdom grows, managing everything becomes tedious due to a messy interface. No proper event logs or notes: Important events happen but aren't logged well, which leads to confusion or missed context. Performance hiccups: Even on a good PC, I experienced occasional lag when during large battles. Graphics & Audio The art style is medieval and consistent, though nothing particularly striking. The soundtrack is fine but becomes repetitive over time. Battle effects are simple and lack visual impact. Final Thoughts After 5 hours, I think 9 Kings shows real potential, especially for players who enjoy slower-paced, deep strategy games. That said, it definitely needs more polish to reach its full potential. My Rating: 7/10 A solid game for strategy fans who enjoy planning and diplomacy. However, I’d recommend waiting for a few more updates if you prefer a smoother, more polished experience.

Great game. It was what made me get steam. Did not disappoint. I like it a lot!

Absolutely great and unique indie game with a nice blend of deckbuilder, rogue like and auto battler. Every king is unique and tons of combinations, synergies and strategies can be explored. Excellent game, 10 out of 10!

really fun game with a good amount of content very similar to balatro

Hundreds of rats mounted atop hundreds of boars.

The only downside of this game is how Addicting it is just got it because it was native on mac and i enjoy rougelikes but ended up putting more time into this than baltro which i got recently because it was fun on playstation plus for a month

It is a very fun game. After playing it when it came out, I had almost perfected the game, but then they launched more content and added ~9 more achievements. I'm not sure of the actual number. I usually hate when devs do that. It is very annoying when achievement hunting, but the extra achievements were pretty easy to get. The hardest being the, "So You Think You Can Speedrun" (beat the first final boss in under 9 minutes). Once you learn the game a bit, it doesn't take long, though albeit annoying when RNG wrecks you. All in all, a very fun game that I will come back to from time to time. Two more Kings will be added at some point, and I am looking forward to those. I really hope one of them is the Rainbow King. The cards from that king are OP, but extremely cool. It would be nice to be able to play with the King of that set of cards. Very cool game. Inexpensive for the quality of game you get. I really love these types of games and I look forward to seeing what else the devs do with it.

SUMMARY: A rougelite city manager/decbuilder/battler with a great aesthetic, combos galore, and lots to unlock. Absolute must-reccomend at the price even in Early Access. 9 Kings is a game that's in the vein of "someone knew what they wanted and made it." It's a game meant to fulfill a specific desire, and it does. That desire is a fast-playing city-builder and battler. Try to rule the world in a half hour (or hour if you go long). So here's what you do: PICK YOUR KING: Each King is different, with different units. As you progress you unlock perks, some general some not, to customize them. Also, the designs are great from the skeletal King of Blood to the classical King of Nothing. BUILD YOUR CITY: You start with a handful of cards and earn more as you fight your fellow kings. You place troops, buildings, use enchantments, and so on to build your kingdom. BATTLE: Every turn you place one or more cards (depending on events) then its off to war with one of your fellow kings. Battles are mostly automatic, but you do have a special attack for each king you use in battle. Battles yield cards based on the King you fought, so you can easily combine card types. SYNERGIES: Combos are the name of the game as troops, enchantments, buildings, and upgrades combine and that's where the differences get made. Archers with static bolts, wizards throwing combustable bolts that grow more powerful through a library, vampiric paladins, exploding rats whose ever-growing horde comes from local farms - you can make all sorts of combos. Buildings also work together, from flesh-munching catapults to healing towers that may make your armored troops near-indestructible. UNLOCKABLES: Keep playing to get more perks, more kings, and more to do. I don't always say an Early Access is must-buy, but this game is fine even in its unfinished state. I'm not sure it needs much more already, and you'll get your money's worth. It also is a game whose design and mechanics invite expansion, so I look forward to what the authors do. If you like townbuilders, unusual roguelikes, and combos, go for it.

Fun, unique, and innovative roguelike with frequent updates and a promising future!

I love this game. its super fun and lots to do. love trying diff strats love spamming a billion archers tho!

I really like the game and the mechanics. The kings offer different play styles and there are lots of possible strategies. At the beginning I thought only one or two kings have the potential to beat King V difficulty, now I'm optimistic every king has the potential. Especially on higher difficulties there is some luck involved. With the "wrong" starting cards you sometimes are doomed to loose in just a few minutes. On the other hand with a bit of luck you can have games that last over an hour. With the latest patch the the difficulty scales better, before it was far easier to reach year 100 and beyond.

https://i.imgur.com/IOjDi4L.png After clearing IX IX with my favourite king i think i can now properly give a review The games really good, the devs are giving constant updates. They are taking feedback, they are fixing the game week by week, if you want a simplified CiV-like that's addicting that you can sink a lot of hours into this is a game that'll do it with a reasonably low cost. I trust in these devs to keep making the game better. I'm still waiting for them to do something about how bad mangler is though. :D

Very nice game, the idea to let the player continue playing on endless mode after winning is brilliant. Only remarkable points; after trying some different builds and ideas, it looks like most strategies are focused on surviving early-mid term which then won't be useful on endless mode. The other point is the optimization, they are conscious on that, as they warn the player that after a long run they may experiment certain troubles, but this sets a very defined limit to the game, transforming your computer into a microwave, not even reaching year 100. Hope they fix it soon, still a very enjoyable game.

One of the best little indie games I have ever purchased. I got solid 35 hours trying to grind out every king to king level. I think this game does a wonderful job of changing the colour palette ant starting cards between the kings that I felt my runs were varied enough. For the price I found it a good value, it's also quite a relaxing game to quickly play in about 30 minutes between runs. Easy recommend if your a strategy Enjoyer who wants to kick back with a coffee in the morning. That being said it will have a shelf-life, but two new kings coming and the extra neutral cards, still looking forward to jumping back in. This game just hit all the right notes for me and thus was compelled to sing it's praises.

[b]Short version review:[/b] Overall, I’d recommend this game. I tried Balatro at the same time, but liked 9 Kings more because it offers more goals: various conditions for unlocking kings, leveling them, discovering talents — rather than just “collecting unique cards.” Longer version! ^^ [b]What I liked:[/b] - Each king provides unique play style based on his city's main building mechanics and cards. - Achievements (if you're into them) push you to try different tactics and even discover strengths in decks you didn’t like at first. Though I still couldn’t get into the King of Progress — mainly because its main building hovers over enemies and conceals them, which made targeting harder than it should be. [b]What left mixed feelings:[/b] - The cards you draw after each round seem tied to the kings you’re fighting. It has pros and cons: you might discover interesting mixes and unexpected combos of your king's deck and enemies, but if you want to play strictly your king’s deck, it becomes impossible — sometimes the needed cards just won’t drop, and entire “cities” end up built from other kings’ decks. - Only 3 of 9 talents for each King are unique. - If you enjoy spending time deckbuilding and min-maxing, this game won’t satisfy you — it’s more about playing + a bit rerolling cards, rather than building. Personally, I’m fine with that. What became irritating - the sounds. :D Battles at max speed turn into a noisy mess, so I ended up muting them (even though I usually love game OSTs).

In the year 128, with an army of over 5.000 units, with tens of thousands of damage dealt per hit of each unit, with tens of thousands of hits per second by each unit, the game finally decided that my reign shall be cut short.... by crashing the program ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [error: index out of bounds exception] out of 10 dead lab rats. Do recommend.

Very fun! The interactions all the buildings have with one another combined with the card pulling makes for a super replayable game. There are multiple ways to victory in all the difficulties too which you don't always see.

I can recommend this game! It's a good way to relax on easier levels, and gives you something to think about on harder levels! Be sure to check out the upper right of the screen - the "auto" toggle for your citadel's active ability and speed settings are handy for fine-tuning the experience. Since the creators are checking out reviews for feedback, I do have some suggestions... FEATURES *"Concede battle" button that lets you instantly lose a life and move to the next year, for when enemy troops are slowly marching up to your castle. *"I'm done" button that lets you immediately return to the main menu without bothering to save or end the run - this would be especially nice when the King's exp is maxed out and you don't want to sit through a Run Over animation. DISPLAY *Give Walls a life meter, perhaps placing it above the troop meter like the Pagoda's imps. *Rather than counting mounted boars as instant casualties, have the mounted unit count double when it dies. *Have an option to show damage taken by plots, so we can see how tanky our Paladins are. *If enemy troops' stats change over the course of a run, maybe display this somehow. GAMEPLAY *Have the armies fight in a line without compressing into a tiny point - it would look cooler, and ballistae and lightning bolts won't instantly delete the player's entire army. *When a player rerolls, ensure that at least one option changes. *Allow the player to change the targeting priority of their castle - "highest," "lowest," "furthest," etc. It'd be amazing if the same could be done for each plot, but I don't know how practical that'd be. *If not that, make the King of Greed's palace target high HP enemies and ignore immune targets. ART *Remove the creak of the EXP dialing up when a run ends and the King is at max level. *The text "Infinite" looks like "Immune," so maybe infinite damage could be represented by a little möbius strip or skull. *Make a "Rebel Face," possibly just a mask and hood, that can be used for the preview when your own Kingdom's rebels are attacking next. (It can be the same rebel face for all Kingdoms, probably?) CARDS/ABILITIES *Add a Decree that presents you with all of your King's cards and lets you pick one. (Maybe two?) *Give the King of Greed a decree that makes them lose an amount of gold each year to bribe/buy off some small fraction of enemy forces, similar to the King of Spells turning 5% into frogs. *It might make sense for the King of Nature to have a perk like Warden that lets the Treant start with levels, the idea being that it's ancient and has been growing there for a while! *Give the Pagoda a weak attack or have it slowly regenerate imps, so that the player isn't entirely helpless as that one last enemy elf waddles across the battlefield. *Give the King of Spells a card that lets them remove the enchantment stacks on a plot and gain the cards. *Let every King have a frontline troop of some kind, even if they're substandard, so that the King of Stone doesn't get caught in a death spiral of never getting any troops because they get slaughtered every time a King that has frontline troops attacks them. I wouldn't have such a long list if I wasn't enjoying the game, though! One last note: it's kind of odd that it's the demonic King of Blood that has a Pagoda. I'm not sure about that choice! What about a nice sinister Basilica? Something that evokes his theme, rather than East Asia.

The game is really good, but sometimes crash, as I got NaN of damage and when the game restart after crash I lost all the status of the soldier

🌟 Rating: 9/10 9 Kings is an absolute hidden gem for anyone who loves strategy, roguelikes, and deckbuilding. The 3x3 grid system seems simple at first, but every decision matters—what to place, when to upgrade, and how to combo your cards into something powerful. Each King offers a fresh, unique playstyle, so runs stay interesting even after several hours. I love how quick the rounds are—15 minutes can easily turn into hours without realizing it. The game does have some bugs and occasional crashes, especially late-game, but it’s Early Access and the core is already super solid. With some balance updates and new content, this could easily be a top-tier strategy title. 🎮 If you liked games like Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, or Loop Hero, you’ll probably love this. Highly recommend — can’t wait to see where it goes.

Tentative no. Most of what's in the game is great. I enjoy the synergy you can create with the different builds. Graphics are good, UI good for the most part. But after playing for a couple of hours and finishing runs, I realise I'm seeing all the same cards. Only 9 cards per class/king. There are unlocks; you get perks when you level up, but it doesn't change much. The game was easy enough already, and the perks make it easier. You can see basically all the game within your first run. Also, the audio is quite rough. When you start a run there's some kind of sound effect(possibly triggered by your units) which is just ridiculously loud. I tried to turn the audio down, but it's still too much, so I had to mute it. The concept of this game is good, it's just a bit thin at this stage.

The most recent patch which reworked the perk system for the kings is honestly a huge problem right now. The kings that had weak cards that relied on their old perks (Greed, Stone, Blood, and Nature) are now just unfun (Greed and Blood getting hit the hardest being both Kings that need to scale, their cards no longer allow them to survive the early turns rustling in 80% more runs dying before turn 12). The Baron + difficulties have also because no longer a challenge they are instead a game of luck, the old perks gave you some agency on these higher difficulties the new perks do not; which leads me into MY biggest issue, it feels like I've lost my agency in the game. The Perk re-work has gutted the fun from the game, I would love to launch the game up for a couple 15-30 minute sessions for a few runs, maybe try for achievements or hunt prince + wins, I feel like to actually to get the same degree of challenge from baron (which used to be my baseline) I have to play on knight. I think once they start to balance and adjust cards and perks the game will be enjoyable again, but at this time I cannot in good conscious recommend the game. TLDR: New perk system completely replaces the challenge and strategy that used to be in the game and now it's just luck.(they gutted the value of strategy in their tower defence rougelike, and until the figure it out I'm going back and also recomending rouge tower)

A simple yet addicting card-game/auto-battler, I genuinely can't stop playing it! I've been having a blast trying new builds and challenges.

where can you find a game where a massive army of rats can do NaN damage and ultimately crashes your game?

I like the game. I wish more builds where viable beyond 30, In the end all that matter are banks, farms, ballista, shrines, temples, Reinforce, and lab rats. Regardless of which king you pick, these are the only cards you need to go beyond 100 for simple fact that ballista pierce all targets in a line without damage fall off, and this equals wave clear. You can kill the enemy faster than they can kill you with this setup. Best is King of Stone because his turret summons cover you as you power up your build while not taking up a space like other turrets. Hope the devs address this as the game progresses. Don't stop working,

fun little game. Very enjoyable feeling of powering up. Though I do think some of the kings are not as powerful as others. I hope that the devs increase the power of the weaker ones instead of weakening the powerful ones. :)