Return of the King('s Field)

 

A long time ago, before From Software was a household name churning out the massively popular Souls games, they made a series called Kings Field for the PlayStation.  A series of first person person real time dungeon crawlers with a unique vibe that despite looking worse than the Windows95 maze screen saver, really dug its claws into anyone who got their hands on it, including me.  Its a fairly expansive series with games all the way up to the PS2 that also has spin offs like Shadow Tower (PS1) or Eternal Ring (PS2) but it’s a style of game that has been long, LONG dead.  Looking at it you may think it similar to something like Elder Scrolls but you’d be way off base.  If you haven’t played any of them just stop reading this post, go play one and then come back, it’s something worth just seeing for yourself rather than having it described to you. 

Like I said though, it’s a style of game that’s been long dead.  I remember playing Eternal Ring on the PS2 when it was new-ish and then basically nothing in that style for many years. But then in 2023 Lunacid hit the scene, a game very openly inspired by Shadow Tower and Kings Field made by the person who gave us Lost in Vivo.  That combo made me drop everything, buy it instantly and play it immediately rather than letting it sit in the backlog for years.  It’s obviously a modern take on the idea being a lot more fluid than any of the KF games ever were but I enjoyed every minute that I spent with it. Then a free to play sequel (prequel?) was released that I haven’t had the time to play yet but that’s so faithful to the concept that the developer made it on the Sword of Moonlight engine, the Kings Field editor that FromSoft made publicly available back in the day and it’s still usable even in current year.  But I thought that was going to be it.  A fringe enthusiast of esoteric bullshit makes something specifically for my tastes and then the genre goes back to sleep, how wrong I seem to be

I’ve noticed, in the last year or two that there’s been an uptick in games on Steam that are using that old Kings Field style and running with it.  Not QUITE clones, but wearing the inspiration so clearly that unless you have no idea what KF is you can see what these developers are doing.  Games like Monomyth, Verho, Flyknight, Labyrinth of the Demon King and the game that inspired this post at time of writing, Queens Domain (har har).  All games that I’m jumping at the chance to play in the near future simply for just being inspired by the niche yet legendary Kings Field.  I don’t know what started the mini-trend of Field-likes but I’m extremely grateful for it happening. 

So if you’re reading this post and you’ve never played a Kings Field game, the first step is to go fix that and play one.  Buy it, emulate it, I don’t give a fuck what you do, I’m ordering you to go play it.  Then when you’re done with that and you’re now addicted, go support some of these folks trying to start a genre revival and help bring the legacy of Kings Field out from under the shadow of Dark Souls.  Now all I need is one indie dev to rip off Baroque and I can die happy