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Have You Played… King Arthur’s Gold?

If we build it, they will come

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

It’s unfortunate that King Arthur’s Gold looks like Terraria, Starbound and the rest of that ilk. Because it is absolutely nothing like those games. What we have here is a tiny, heroic arcade murderfest between teams of 16 players on a medieval battleground that can be populated with huge towers and dastardly tunnels. It’s also the only game for which I’ve written a Steam review. Which must say something about it’s quality, but I’m not sure what.

Sadly, I’m not sure if there’s still players romping around on the servers. It went by relatively unnoticed in 2013. But if you did find a match, you’d be in for an absurd back and forth battle across hills, lakes and minefields. You can be one of three classes, Knight, Archer or Builder. The Knight can swing a sword and glide on his own shield, the Archer gets a handy grappling hook (and later on, fire and bomb arrows), while the Builder is the backbone of your team, gathering gold, stone and wood, and erecting fortifications to keep the enemy away from your Hall.

A match can go a couple of ways. Either one side storms the other and finishes it off quickly, or both teams settle in for the long haul, building towers, moats, pits and traps to keep the other side away. It’s these latter matches that make KAG so notable. It’s the only game, apart from the first Ace of Spades, that I would happily dig from one end of the map to the other in an effort to ambush the enemy. All at the risk of flooding the tunnel and drowning or running into their own tunneling squads.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was a peppy little thing. It had enough arcade action to tide over the constructive moments. And it was terrible to watch as the great wall you built caught fire from an errant flaming arrow, and crumbled into a pile of rubble. Terrible and excellent.

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Ace of Spades

PC

King Arthur's Gold

Video Game

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About the Author
Brendan Caldwell avatar

Brendan Caldwell

Former Features Editor

Brendan likes all types of games. To him there is wisdom in Crusader Kings 2, valour in Dark Souls, and tragicomedy in Nidhogg.

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