We love a good pixel art roguelike title here at Retro News, and 9 Kings has certainly piqued our interest. Described by developer Sad Socket as a “fast-paced roguelike kingdom builder”, 9 Kings ticks a lot of boxes for folks who enjoy strategy, building, and retro-style presentation. It’s out on Steam early access on the 23rd of May 2025 and currently has a demo for those wanting to try before they buy. We’ve been granted a glimpse and give our thoughts in this first impressions post.
The premise in 9 Kings is simple: survive 30 rounds of attacks on your town from neighbouring warmongers by building defences and recruiting troops. If you get through the rounds, you can choose to continue the war or cash out your treasure to upgrade one of nine kings, each with a different set of cards. The cards represent troops, buildings, upgrade buffs, extra resources and other things that you’ll need to crush your foes. If you fail to destroy the oncoming enemies, your castle is attacked, and you lose one of your three lives.
The first few rounds of each new game are usually straightforward, and it isn’t until the later rounds that the nail-biting starts. Each round enables you to place one new card, whether that is a new building, an upgrade to an existing one, a new troop set or add a buff to the playing field. What you choose certainly matters, as you’ll slowly see the enemies building their troop stacks ready for attack. Failure to build enough troops and you’ll see defeat quickly, failure to upgrade buildings enough, and you’ll be too weak to win.
9 Kings has the perfect balance to experiment with, which also allows you to play how you want. During our playthrough, we tried a few different approaches and found that there is a lot of variety in how you can attack the scenarios. Another great aspect is that the more you play, the more kings and interesting gameplay items start to unlock. We managed to upgrade a few of the kings and were awarded points that made permanent upgrades to buildings or troops. This adds a lot of longevity as there is a large number of upgrades to unlock.
It’s not just a good depth to the gameplay, or the amount that needs to be unlocked to see everything, 9 Kings also has some beautiful pixel art featuring a great use of colour. The tiny pixelated troops and wonderfully designed buildings give an air of scale that helps this feel a lot grander than it might be on the surface. The cards are also brilliantly presented, anyone who has played Magic: The Gathering might start to recognise the similarities of colour-coded cards matching certain kings in the game. It’s a nice touch, and 9 Kings does actually play a bit like those old tabletop card games.
Overall, anyone who loves to survive waves of enemies, building up cities, recruiting troops and managing an empire will get some joy from 9 Kings. From the couple of hours we put into it, it’s surprisingly deep, and there appears to be a lot to do to see all of it. Also, those who have a passion for pixel art will at least wish to try the demo, as this one looks lovely and pays homage to the classic strategy 8-bit titles of 40 years ago.
