Kingdom New Lands Free on Epic Now

If you have been keeping up with the many articles where I tell you what is presently free, you may have noticed my slight disinterest in the Twitch Prime loot. Not because of the games themselves provided through the service, but that you pay your annual fee, get your Prime loot (and many others), and the games don’t live up to that. They don’t live up to the mark because of places like Epic and Humble Bundle truly giving away better-known games for free. It’s not only beneficial for some developers; they could also launch their next game higher, but they could also very well get some players exposed to games they otherwise wouldn’t know of.

That being said, the next title on the Epic Store’s free game giveaway is fairly well known. Kingdom New Lands is a 2D somewhat tower defense, strategy, and a city or kingdom builder. Part of the Kingdom series by Noio, which I know mostly in name from the Xbox One’s Game Pass last year.

The reason I didn’t really play it back then was the sheer number of games on Game Pass, and admittedly, my “judge by the cover” approach to the game. From the outside, the management looked little more than superficial and generally didn’t have much to intrigue. Having said that, there is a reason they say not to judge books by their covers: you’ll read less and become a bit ill-informed, which I was. I’ve been playing a bit of it in the time between it going free and now; it’s strangely engrossing.

You play as Henry– no, that’s a different Kingdom game. You play as one of the lords in the houses of lords. You own a bit of land, have money, and pay people to do your work as you sit on horseback. The management does seem to be less detailed than Sims City 3000‘s menus or Cities: Skylines nightmare wall of traffic. However, it’s one of those, “I’ll sit, watching the TV, and play a bit of this game,” and three hours could have passed.