I always feel stupid whenever I try to play city builders. There are just so many resources to think about and care for. Whenever I solve a problem, like gathering enough materials, workers, or food, something else happens.
That was how I felt playing Frostpunk, for example. While I was solving one issue, another one would just pop up, making things more complicated.
When you’re not familiar with city builders, they can be really brutal. A single attempt in Frostpunk can go on for many hours, and you may suddenly lose because it’s nearly impossible to take care of all your population’s needs at once. The learning curve is steep, and you have to play a lot to understand the pace of the game and develop your strategy for future runs.
That’s where Super Fantasy Kingdom sets itself apart. This city builder has roguelike elements and shot to the top of Steam’s trending charts after its release this week. What it excels at is using roguelike unlocks and short runs to take away the most frustrating part of city builders: losing all your progression. That’s what always makes me give up on long games with heavy resource management, including strategy ones like Civilization.
When I play Super Fantasy Kingdom, I don’t mind losing. Every try is considerably short, from 30 minutes to one hour. When I was learning and playing my first few runs, losing was not as punishing or frustrating because I earned rewards that would take me further in my next attempt. Rewards for failing don’t exist in traditional city builders.
This is especially important for busy adult gamers. Sometimes you don’t have five straight hours to put into a game where you need to remember exactly what you were doing. If I play a long scenario in Frostpunk and have to stop halfway through, I don’t remember what I was doing when I come back. But in Super Fantasy Kingdom, I know the run will fit into the time I have to game.
I finally don’t need a guide to learn how to win in a city builder
Because of the roguelike loop of Super Fantasy Kingdom, it’s much easier to understand how to win. Each time you lose, you can see it as “not a win condition”. It’s a path to avoid in a future run, which takes you closer to figuring out the win condition.
Instead of giving me an overwhelming number of strategic options to win, like in traditional city builders, Super Fantasy Kingdom started by showing me one or two basic strategies: get as many workers as possible to gather resources and deploy units to protect the Kingdom. But then I realized I also needed resources to upgrade characters and refine some of them to unlock new buildings. I slowly understood how the game mechanics worked and how they could lead me to victory. The learning curve is much faster because it has clear feedback and progression tied to it.
I’m a huge fan of Hades, Risk of Rain, and Slay the Spire, so I know this is all obvious for a roguelike. However, I believe this kind of progression fits the city builder genre perfectly. You don’t need to read lengthy guides or watch YouTube videos because the game teaches you how to win by showing you why you lost.
That’s why Super Fantasy Kingdom is such an amazing game and why it’s sparking my curiosity to play more city builders. Roguelikes are one of gaming’s best genres for people like me, who want to learn underlying mechanics, strategies, and understand a game’s complexity. They teach me how the game works, and learning how to win all by myself is one of the most rewarding feelings in gaming.
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