A World of Keflings is the follow up to Ninjabee's hit casual building sim A Kingdom for Keflings. Offering multiple game worlds, brand new buildings and more multiplayer features; the game aims to improve on it's predecessor in almost every way, but does it succeed?
A World of Keflings tasks you with building up a kingdom with the help of the world's inhabitants - keflings. These guys are basically little workers which obey your every command. You'll take control of your actual Xbox Live avatar to give the keflings orders and build up the world. By picking up the keflings and placing them on an object you'll give them a job, for example dropping a kefling onto a tree will turn him into a wood cutter. Pick up another kefling, place him on some logs, then place him on a work-hut and he'll constantly walk back and forth gathering the logs for you. Using your resources gathered by the keflings you can then bring up your blueprint menu and build the required parts to create a building. As you progress you'll need special resources to complete advanced buildings such as wooden planks made from wood logs, or educated keflings. The longer keflings work in one job they'll level up, hit them on the head to grant them their increased job level and they'll offer improved performance. It's a very streamlined system and is consistantly easy to use.
'Kefling Stories' have been implemented into A World of Keflings, these are basically quests giving you tasks to progress through the story. Where the first game didn't really have any major narrative, AWoK constantly sets you with different objectives throughout the game - this makes the experience much more focused without ever restricting the player from having freedom in this sandbox world. The stories are all told in a self satirical way, with amusing kefling speech noises complimenting the subtitled text on-screen.
The game is extremely casual through and through. There is no kind of failure or time constraints given, just some chilled out music and a couple of aims for the player. Forget what your doing? No worries - just hit LT and you'll get an on-screen prompt telling you what you should be aiming to do next. Don't know what to build? Just hit RB and select a blueprint from the large tech-tree, then hit LB to see the exact list of parts you need. Need help building? Doug and Bob will follow you everywhere, bringing your parts straight from the work-hut to you, and even sometimes finish off buildings for you! Feeling lonely? Hit RT and a second player can press 'start' on their pad to jump in seamlessly split-screen or you can invite up to 3 of your friends to play online! You'll never be lost in AWoK.
Graphically the game isn't going to wow anyone but offers a consistent charming style. Keflings of all shapes and sizes will walk around your world. A dynamic weather system even allows for rain and snow, with the latter changing the look of the world. The avatar implementation is a neat personal touch, and doesn't cause any framerate slowdown some players might have witnessed in the original title. In fact the whole game runs perfectly smooth, even when theres' alot going on on-screen. The music features some relaxing acoustic tunes which you'll find yourself humming along too in no time. It simply offers a ton of personality and charm throughout.
Overall A World of Keflings does exactly what it sets out to do. The game improves on it's predecessor in every possible way. The amount of buildings has been vastly increased both in number and variety, multiple worlds keep things interesting with snowy, forest and desert environments. The systems and interface have all been streamlined, along with a lite questing system added to give the player focus and keep you hooked. It's extremely casual and relaxing - you'll waste away hours in your armchair without even realising. The coop works very smoothly and the addition of splitscreen coop is a fantastic touch to a title so casual-friendly as this. The only real issue is the lack of replayability. Once you've progressed through the game and built all your buildings there's not much really left to do, other than build more of the same buildings to perfect your kingdom. Sure the musical cannons offer some brilliant depth to play around with, thanks to the ability to manipulate their instrument, pitch, effect, FX colour and tempo - but only a very small portion of players will find this system appealing.
If you've played A Kingdom for Keflings you'll know what to expect from A World of Keflings, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Ninjabee have expanded on the first in the series in every way possible. This is a great start to the 'Games for the Holidays' XBLA promotion. If you're looking for a break from the frantic action of first person shooters this Christmas then look no further.
A World of Keflings Gets An Official Game-Pad: 8.0/10
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