Marvelous Interactive has a history of publishing cute games with a lot of hidden depth; the Harvest Moon series has been their bread and butter for many years now. One could be forgiven for assuming the same when they teamed up with Cing (known for the Nintendo DS adventure games Another Code, Hotel Dusk) and Town Factory to produce Little King’s Story, but this case is a little different. Don’t let that cutesy exterior fool you, for underneath it lays an adventure of cold-hearted world conquest, religious persecution and genocide – who knew that taking over the world and being a vicious bastard could be such addictive fun?

Little King’s Story begins innocently enough, with a young lad roaming around the woods, happy-as-Larry. The boy finds a crown and places it on his head and is whisked away to a new land, Alpoko, where he is immediately declared king. Of course, once you get to Alpoko, you quickly discover that the kingdom is in disarray; the land under your control is tiny, the treasury is empty and only half a dozen people live under your rule, and they are all filthy, lazy hippy types. Fortunately, your royal court is a bit more competent, and ready, willing and able to assist you in your kingly tasks. Howser is your closest adviser, planning your expansion strategies, keeping track of your citizen’s desires and constantly egging you on to become the ruler of the world. Verde handles administrative matters such as kingdom statistics and saving of progress, while Liam is the local know-it-all, your one-stop-shop for all things tutorials.


In its early stages, Little King’s Story is tightly focused and structured – the game does its best to get players used to the basics while sending them down a fairly linear path of progression. The first goal is to get some cash in the treasury, which requires getting a few of your lazy citizens to help you dig up a bit of loose change around the kingdom. Once you have got some money in the bank, you can build the first extension to your village – a soldier hut – and start taking requests from citizens. The first major quest you will encounter is a fight against a giant cow’s head; you’ll need to change some of your lazy citizens into soldiers first, or it will be a very short battle. Little King’s Story’s core action component borrows liberally from Pikmin; you will call on your citizens to follow you (only five to start with, though you can command up to 30 with upgrades), and toss them at your enemies or whatever thing you need them to do. Upon the defeat of the cow, the kingdom will hold a festival, and you will be treated to your first expansion.

After you’ve secured the first kingdom expansion, Little King’s Story begins to open up a bit more, and your quest to improve and expand Alpoko really begins. The Onii, whose kingdom controls the rest of the lands around Alpoko, contact the king and insult his honour, leading Howser to suggest that you crush them and take over their territories. Your population begins to expand – citizens in your service develop bonds, fall in love and breed (which makes it even harder on you when they die, especially since you have to pay out death benefits). New roles become available for your citizens, including carpenters, chefs, archers and more. The citizens demand more; you will constantly be needing to harvest gold to build new structures, creating soldiers to help you fight the Onii and generally running around as mad as a lorry to keep everyone in the kingdom happy.

Once the grounding is set, Little King’s Story runs like a well oiled machine. The game does have you doing the same thing over and over – finding a new location overrun with Onii, capturing it, building it up and moving on – yet the process never seems to become dull or tiresome. The hours will fly by as you improve the various parts of your kingdom, make the population happy and productive, find new treasures and lead scores of men to their doom in battles against giant frogs and other evil critters. The game is very long; just when it seems like you have done all that you need to, and are starting to get a little bored, a new territory opens up or a new job springs up, and gives you that second wind.


While settling into Little King’s Story for the long haul is unquestionably easy, the designers seem to have done their best to turn players away with some odd quirks and design decisions that seem to be stuck in gaming eras past. Controlling the King is handled via the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, and although it does not involve any motion control, it can still be a little clumsy particularly when directing your crew. Measures are implemented that make the process easier, but it takes a little getting used to, particularly if you’re fresh from the New Play Control versions of the Pikmin games, whose remote placement of troops was handled in a superior fashion. Also somewhat annoying is the fact that you need to return to the King’s home in order to cash in your loot and save your progress – there’s no other way to do it, though the game eventually helps out after the kingdom is expanded by adding in quick travel points.

Little King’s Story features extremely charming visuals. All characters, including enemies and bosses, are ridiculously adorable, with infectious personalities and their own curious way of waddling about the environment. Environments are gorgeous, lush and varied; they’re bleak and uninviting when controlled by the Onii, but overthrow them and they become filled with life. The game isn’t exactly a technical marvel, though – everything looks a bit too blurry and there’s not too much in the way of detail on characters or in the world. In some instances, the developer has implemented a few clever tricks to get by the Wii’s limitations – they use a filter over the game’s low quality pre-rendered scenes to give it a hand-drawn look. Characters all speak an adorable form of gibberish which does nothing to dampen the game’s amusing script. Almost all of the game’s music has been taken from the public domain; you’ll hear tracks like Land of Hope and Glory and Bolero from the musical Carmen – the prestige of this musical selection helps to give you that kingly feeling.

On a system that’s lacking in software that caters towards the taste of long term gamers, Little King’s Story is a blessing. It’s a wonderful combination of RPGs, management sims and real-time strategy, with an adorable art style and ridiculously absorbing gameplay. It has a few little issues that hold it back from perfection, but once you adapt to these quirks, you’re in for a real treat. It’s a shame that the game is unlikely to be appreciated by the Wii’s wider audience, because Little King’s Story is easily the best game to have graced the system this year. So if you’re a Wii owner looking for something other than low quality mini-game compilations, Little King’s Story is an absolute must-buy.