Returning to the Kingdom of Loathing
After watching a video on The West of Loathing, I’m suddenly filled with the desire to play the Kingdom of Loathing again. The humour and deliberately lazy extremely stylized art triggered a strong sense of nostalgia in me, as I remembered the fun moments, hilarious lines, interesting item blurbs, and that one orc camp filled with innuendos. The one thing that I can’t remember, however, is my old login details. So I just said “screw it” and decided to begin anew.
I remembered the six choices: two warrior classes, two mage classes and two rogue classes.
I was a spell-casty type the last time I played. Honestly, I saw no reason to change that. Only reason why I went with Pastamancer instead of Sauceror is because Marinara Warlock doesn’t have the same ring to it.
After I reclaimed a place in the Kingdom, I was greeted with this:
And after ascending up the mountain (moving my pointer over and clicking it), I saw a bird.
I went for cocktailcrafting first, since I have rather distinct memories of mixing up screwdrivers.
I swear that grapefruit is just taunting me. It’s just so close to being an orange yet it definitely wasn’t
After begrudgingly mixing the drinks that I do not want, I turned my attention to the first thing on the Toot Oriole’s list of things he wants to teach me about: my inventory.
And that is rather nice of you, Toot. Considering the rather fancy horned helmet I wear in TF2 that is the Planeswalker Helm plus the Brimstone mashed into it, I would like to get a horned helmet in Kingdom of Loathing as well. Which, considering the presence of orcs in this game, probably won’t be that hard.
I next decided to learn cooking, because only squares follow the order.
I mixed up a small batch of fruit popsicles. And to celebrate my newfound competency in cooking, I ate them all.
I went on to learn about adventuring. The bird tasked me to destroy three crates in some weird cave.
Although I knew these crates won’t have any sweet loot, I still had hope that it’ll have something nice.
And to fulfill the demands of my feathery guide, I moved on to smashing the next crate.
Now that my screwdriver craving is finally sated, I went on with the rest of the tutorial. The Toot Oriole now wants me to use my spells on … what?
I wasn’t expecting actual combat against actual enemies at this point, and the far-off memories of a playthrough long before were now of little help, mainly because I can’t remember anything. I braced myself for whatever they decided to throw at me.
… Are you serious.
Well, at the very least this tutorial fight will be a breeze. I doubt I’m going to be taking a single point of damage for this. I mean, I doubt they can make the bunnies hurt me without making a Monty Python reference, and that’ll just be so overused as a joke.
After that, the rest of the tutorial is rather uneventful. I just completed it and started the game proper.
Kingdom of Loathing, despite its rather simplistic art, does pack a fair amount of depth. But best of all, it is full of humour and character, and among all the games I played, this is definitely one that I can say made me chuckle the most. This is made with a lot of care and love, and is definitely the #1 game to me as a shining symbol of how graphics does not a good game make.
So yes, do give this game a shot. This is a spend-a-fixed-amount-of-energy-for-actions-a-day type of game, but you can replenish energy through eating food, which you can cook using drop you’ve gotten from fighting mobs. You will get full and will be unable to eat more food until the day resets after eating a certain amount, though, so there’s a limit to that.
But still, this is an experience you are quite unlikely to find in any other game. It’s not exactly a praise, since Ride to Hell: Retribution is also an experience you won’t find in another game, although I doubt people will be actively searching for something like RtH:R. My point is, Kingdom of Loathing is a unique and enjoyable experience, and is worth getting into just for the text blurbs alone.