Little King’s Story’s manages to strike a beautiful balance between the macro and micro. While keeping an eye on your nation as a whole and ensuring your people are happy and well resourced is vital to success, it never feels like a burden; in fact, you feel as much resident as ruler. This feeling of homeliness is emphasised by the fact that, once a town has been built, it is for the most part self sustaining, allowing you to stroll around and enjoy watching your townsfolk living their lives, mending roofs, farming or just sitting down and having a smoke – the sense that you are part of a living and breathing (albeit cartoony) community is wonderful. Add to this the fact that every resident has their own name, can fall in love, marry (with a nudge through the church doors by yourself), die, mourn, acquire new skills, have children, send you letters (with suggestions and rumours to fuel new quests) and you have a world that is both convincingly alive and a real pleasure to visit.

Similarly easy going are the game’s resource management mechanics. Unlike more complex simulations, the only decisions you need to make in the planning of your towns is what to build next, with their location being pre-ordained – then it’s just a simple task of accruing enough wealth to fund their development. While this may sound a little bit simplistic, in reality it works beautifully, allowing you to focus on where to explore next and which of your subjects to take with you – something that should not be taken lightly, as the wilds beyond your kingdom’s borders can be a dangerous, and enthralling, place.

A wonderfully eclectic array of creatures populate the game’s worlds – from killer sunflowers to overly protective mushrooms, bat-winged sheep, skull-headed cows, clockwork Knights and bottle-blowing, cannonball-headed demons – and all must be overcome if you wish to lay claim to the seven kingdoms they inhabit. The game’s avoidance of fantasy clichés (there are no orks or goblins here) proves to be a great incentive to see what lies around the next bend, beyond the next gate, past the next boss. Of course, this would all count for nothing if the game wasn’t fun to play; luckily exploration and combat is handled with as much aplomb as the rest of the game.

Little King’s Story is a game of stunning breadth, imagination and slickly implemented design, and filled with an envious degree of heart and soul. There are flaws; for example the Wii remotes capabilities aren’t used at all, organising your Royal Guard can be fiddly and losing thirty minutes of play by dying before saving can become frustrating. However, the fact remains that in grabbing hold of the Little King’s coattails, you should prepare yourself for an adventure that is unique, memorable and thought-provoking; that it manages to retain a sense of intrigue and progression throughout its 30 hours plus play-time is a testament to its quality. While many may dismiss royalty as being little more than a drain on the taxpayer, with Little King’s Story Cing and Town Factory have undoubtedly produced a monarch more than worthy of his crown.

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