Kingdom of Loathing: An adventurer is you!
Always leave them wanting more. For all the charm, wit and geeky goofiness packed into The Kingdom of Loathing, that simple, proven axiom is the secret of the game’s long-term success. It’s a free internet browser game, which means it would be easy to stay up all night playing until you get all crazy-eyed (like you did with Bejeweled that one time, don’t lie) and then become sick of it. But the game won’t let you. It gives you a certain number of turns each day, and then, no matter how bad you want it, you’re done. If you want to finish up your quest to defeat the Knob Goblin king, you’ll just have to come back tomorrow.
And come back I have, for something like three years now. This simple, point-and-click text adventure, with graphics comprised almost entirely of stick figures, has held my attention longer than anything else I’ve ever played (or anyone I’ve ever dated, come to think of it. That fact is a little disturbing).
Let me walk you through the game a bit, just so you can get the flavor. You start by making a character, which consists of picking a name and a gender, and choosing from six different character classes — I’ve played them all by now, and I can tell you that I like Seal Clubber and Disco Bandit the best. Right now I’m grinding my way through a Bad Moon Sauceror run and — you know what, I’m getting ahead of myself. You make a character and set off to fight monsters, gaining meat to buy new gear (yes, currency in the Kingdom is measured in meat) and experience points to go up levels. Pretty standard stuff, but keep in mind here that the combat consists of clicking a button to attack, and having the game tell you what happens. For example, you might encounter the Baiowulf:
This legendary creature is half wolf, half Scott Baio. He wants to be in charge of your days and your nights, and he wants to be in charge of your wrongs and your rights. But you don’t want him in charge of you, so you charge him.
If your attack doesn’t work out too well, it might result in this:
He asks if you know where Joanie is, and when you can’t answer, he becomes enraged and viciously claws you.
The game is full of goofy humor, and geek references up the wazoo — almost everything you stumble upon winds up being an absurd pun on a They Might Be Giants song or The Fifth Element or something — and that’s where most of the fun is. But underneath it all is just enough actual GAME to keep you interested. You go through some quests, go up some levels and eventually defeat the Naughty Sorceress (also a stick figure, so settle down) and free King Ralph from his prism prison. Your character can eat and drink to increase the number of turns you get each day, but eventually you’ll be too full or falling down drunk, so a big part of the strategy is making those turns count. By the time you’re building a bartender-in-the-box to mix better drinks so you can get a few extra clicks in before you have to quit, let me tell you, you’re hooked.
The other thing that amazes me about the Kingdom of Loathing is the amount of depth in it. After you defeat the Sorceress you can ascend into the afterlife, play cards with famous dead guys for a while, and then get reincarnated and play the whole thing again. You have a few choices on how to go about this, too — you can opt for a casual ascension, where you get to keep all your stuff and breeze through the game, or go Hardcore, where you’ll just choose a single hard-earned skill from your previous life to make permanent and start over with nothing. Depending on what kind of player you are, you can have a wildly different game experience. Some focus on speed runs, where they do a lot of math and try to top the leaderboards by ascending in the fewest possible turns. Others open up a store in the Mall and amass a fortune in meat by selling items to other players. Some band together with clan members for multiplayer runs in the underground city of Hobopolis, hoping to procure the really choice gear. Many of the puzzles are mind-bogglingly difficult, too, and would be damn near impossible without the absurdly comprehensive, fan-maintained wiki. That’s okay, though. The game knows that you have the internet, and that if a something gets so tricky it stops being fun, you’ll look up the solution. That’s part of it.
As for me, I’m content with my single player existence, running Elvispotato through the hoops (that’s me, Elvispotato of Old CW’s Germ Free Clan), amassing the best skills from each character class and collecting familiars, trophies and tattoos. It’s become part of my regular routine. The Kingdom of Loathing is just who I am, now. And after all this time, there’s still more to do. There are the long-term, pain-in-the-ass goals (one day I’ll get the Manual of Transcendant Olfaction from the Bounty Hunter, or install a telescope in my campsite). And the game designers are always adding bits of new content and revamping old quests, too.
The Kingdom is free to play forever, but if you donate ten bucks, you’ll get a token that gives you a stat bonus, or that you can trade in for an ever-changing selection of extra-special stuff. I promise you, though, you absolutely don’t need any of the paid gear to enjoy the game, and if you care enough to even want it, you won’t begrudge floating them a little scratch every once in a while.
Granted, it costs double in my household. Because if my sweetie buys a Mini-Hipster familiar for herself, she knows damn well that she’d better get me one, too.
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
Actually, I got you a hipster of your very own. I did get us both organ grinder monkeys, though. They grind the organs of your enemies into meat pies!
You had me at Baiowulf.
It really is superfun, and full of jokes. The Fans have come together to make a bank, where you can get interest on your meat, and other groups will cast helpful magic bonus spells on you if you pay them some meat, and there’s even a KOL Mafi that will play your boring turns for you (letting you build up your stats and go up levels) so you can get to the good stuff.
The Legendary Baiowulf is actually an ultra-rare adventure that I have never encountered in the game. I found it when I was looking for graphics at the KOL wiki. I shall now plumb the depths of the Spooky Forest (i.e., click on the “Spooky Forest” link over and over) until I hunt him down and destroy him!
This game sounds very simlar to improbable island except for limited turns thing