There’s always something a little bit odd about playing a game that, fifteen minutes in, you recognise you do not like, but which you can nevertheless recognise is doing well at what it set out to do. This sensation becomes even more odd when the reasons why you don’t like are obvious, but they’re also the exact reasons your partner gushed over the game for weeks and insisted on sitting with you to “give you some pointers” even though you understand the game, but just don’t enjoy it.

Hi, Jeff. Sometimes, I do manage to make the numbers go brrrrrr.

Mortgage everything, build a hotel, and bankrupt my enemies, right?

9 Kings is a roguelike city builder with vague hints of deckbuilding, tower defence, and puzzles thrown in, just for that bit of extra spice. You play as one of nine kings (get it?) defending your little settlement against the other kings for as long as possible. You do this by building structures, raising armies, and hoping your settlement scales faster than the enemies’ troops. Each year, players add a building to their settlement, upgrade their troops, then send them out to fight, repeating and repeating until either their settlement or their patience crashes.

Trying to slot 9 Kings into any particular genre feels like an exercise in futility. While it is a city builder (in that, at the end, you have something resembling a city), the actual placement of buildings and units in the 3x3 starting grid is a bit of a puzzle. Multiple scenarios, too, are better understood as puzzles needing one explicit solution rather than an opportunity to try a variety of approaches. This combination of roguelike elements and sneaky puzzle elements gives the game a fairly unique feeling.

At the same time, 9 Kings also manages to feel generic in a vaguely comfortable sort of way. While its particular combination of mechanics and elements is a new one, the overall principles of tower defence - which play heavily into how this game plays - are not. Indeed, that familiarity was part of what I found off-putting about the game. That is so reminiscent of tower defence games and other defence-builders while obviously not being a game in that genre left a jarring feeling through every run, as if something was missing, even though I consciously knew that something I was missing was never meant to be there in the first place.

It is Year 60. Eurasia is still at war with Oceania. We have always been at war with Oceania.

This is, however, a positive review, largely because I recognise that, despite my own lack of fun with this game, it is very fun for people who are better able to accept it and enjoy it for what it is rather than what I’d rather it be. 9 Kings is, fundamentally, a game about figuring out how to break the game and the myriad of satisfying ways in which to do that. The essence of the challenge is to scale exponentially, and the game provides a wide variety of avenues to explore to do exactly that.

The game contains a freeform and scenario mode, with the scenario mode being more puzzle-esque, while the freeform mode is…freeform. It’s the freeform mode that provides the most opportunities for absolute shenanigans - such as having your troops annihilate all enemies within a second of having a battle start - though there is also something satisfying about the more puzzle-y elements of scenario play.

One of the game’s biggest weaknesses, however, is in the general opaqueness of its UI. While mousing over any given set of troops will show what upgrades they have, unless one is already familiar with all the icons in the game, it can be difficult to understand what those upgrades are doing or how they impact combat. Similarly, once in combat, the lack of feedback about anything other than troop losses and amount of damage being taken makes it difficult to figure out why a battle has gone in a particular direction. When my troops that had previously been massacring everything in under a second suddenly get thrashed in the next fight, an explanation would be helpful in figuring out how to salvage the run. The game, however, disagrees.

This lack of clarity creates a system that can be frustrating, but at the same time, makes it clear that frustration is allowed to be limited. Yes, it’s difficult to figure out what all of the enchantments on your warlocks are doing, but if they’re winning, that’s what matters. The specifics matter less than the scaling structure as a whole.

Which, again, can be deeply frustrating. Or it can be fun, if you’re someone other than me.

Boost! I understand boost!

Ultimately, 9 Kings is an interesting little city builder, scaling challenge game. It is easy to pick up, and easy to understand how to break, while not being easy as a whole. It’s satisfying to get into, particularly if these sorts of battlers are already a genre you enjoy. For my part, though, I was reminded of the games I wasn’t playing, the information I wasn’t getting, and left just a tad bit bored.

Developer: Sad Socket
Genre: City Builder, Tower Defence(?)
Year: 2025
Country: United States, Brazil
Language: English
Play Time: 30-40 minutes/session
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/QcJ1k3We_Js