Arthur is back and he's once again ready to flex his organizational muscles in My Kingdom For the Princess 2! A honeymoon with his princess gets interrupted by disaster after disaster, and Arthur is required to rebuild various islands in order to save the princess. Use your time management skills to control workers, collect resources, manage buildings and defeat the local wildlife in this fast-paced time and resource management game!
The first My Kingdom for the Princess game was a breakout hit, introducing us to a game that managed to combine time management, resource management and adventure gaming into one great entertainment package. The sequel is no less impressive, building upon the successful formula and adding new twists along the way.
The game begins right after the conclusion of the previous game, with Arthur and the princess flying in a hot air balloon to some tropical islands for their honeymoon. Unfortunately, their holiday is cut short when their balloon crashes and they find themselves stranded on the islands. More disasters happen soon after, and Arthur has to help the locals rebuild the islands in exchange for their aid in getting him and the princess back home.
The game is played on a handful of islands, each of which contains several levels of increasing difficulty. You are required to complete quests in order to pass these levels. Examples of the quests include repairing bridges, constructing buildings and defeating enemies. These objectives have specific requirements; for example repairing a bridge will require a certain amount of wood and food, and a worker to perform the action. Similarly, defeating an angry bear will require a hunter's skill, and enough gold to pay him.
This brings us to the resource management, which is the main part of the game. There are 3 resources: gold, wood and food. Every action you take in the game will involve either acquiring or using these resources. You'll need food for the worker to clear debris, wood to build the hunting lodge, and gold to pay the hunter to kill enemies. So how do you get these resources? You could send your workers to collect any loose resources lying around. But more importantly, there will be resource buildings that you can construct. A fishing hut will produce food at a constant rate, while the sawmill does the same for wood.
As you can imagine, properly managing your resources will be the key to winning each level. There are also elements of puzzle gaming here, and you will need to properly plan the order of your actions. Do things in the wrong order and you might find yourself without wood and having to wait for the sawmill to slowly produce enough for you to continue. This is fine if you have all day... but you don't. This is a time management game after all, and you will have to race against the clock to complete all the objectives in the set time.
Fortunately, you will have extra help in your rush to complete your objectives. Every time you perform a task, your power bar will increase. You can use this power to activate various cool effects such as making your workers run faster, having resources refill faster, hiring an extra temp worker or even stopping time itself! The more powerful the effect, the more power it requires and the less often you can use it.
In later levels, as the objectives become tougher to complete, you will be able to get extra help as well. You will be able to upgrade your buildings, making them produce more resources and housing more workers. It's not plain sailing all the way though. The later levels are really mind-boggling, and even if you manage to complete them, you can still try to complete them in even less time to achieve expert ratings. And if that is too easy as well, the developers have also posted their own score records for you to beat!
The game is a nice unique blend of time management, resource management and puzzle solving. It is also supported by graphics and music that are bright and vibrant. Overall, My Kingdom For the Princess 2 will satisfy any time management fan, especially those who like the original My Kingdom for the Princess game or similar games such as Be A King. Get the Mac version here.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
You can read more about My Kingdom For the Princess 2 at
http://www.game-tycoon.com/my-kingdom-for-the-princess-2.html