King Arthur's Gold is an online action game developed and published by Transhuman Design for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Gameplay
King Arthur's Gold is a game about mining resources, building castles and destroying the player's enemies. It is a side-scrolling 2D pixlated action online multiplayer and offline singleplayer war game with a focus on building by gathering resources, buying and unleashing siege machines, and PvP-combat. There are three playable classes: Knight, Archer, and Builder. Each class has their own role in KAG and work together to defeat the enemy team. Knights excel at close range combat and demolition using bombs and explosive kegs, as they are referred to as. Archers have superior mobility and a selection of specialized arrows, along with a grappling hook that can be used for parkouring and scaling walls. Builders erect fortifications, build multiple blocks spanning "shops", construct lay traps and initiate escalades. Some inspirations for the game are Soldat, Minecraft, Dungeon Keeper, Ace of Spades, and King Arthur's World. In KAG, two teams struggle to dominate the other on giant randomly generated or custom-made 2D "maps." Currently, there are five online multiplayer modes: CTF, TDM, THH, and the two neglected Sandbox and Challenge. In singleplayer, solitaire Challenges and the short Save the Princess campaign, where the player fights against a purple-clothed necromancer named Sedgwick.
Modding
The game has extensive modding support. Whole game logic is written in AngelScript and can be easily modified by anyone. Numerous mods have been created, adding new classes, items, and game modes. Total conversion mods also exist, e.g. Shiprekt where players build ships from blocks in a top-down view arena. Players can also create their own custom heads and use them along with the official built-in ones, as long as the modded server supports and recognize it. A few heads are recognized by modded, unofficial, and official games, but those are specially-earned, usually by being part of the development team of King Arthur's Gold. Heads are merely cosmetic, changing nothing, not even the hitbox where damage can be dealt.
Development
The team of THD started working on KAG at April 18, 2011, the first alpha version was released only 3 days later. The public beta was released silently on 1 May 2013. The real release of the game was on 5 November 2013. KAG is still under active development as of early 2019, the main focus is on bugfixing, adding minor content, and supporting the community to develop content itself.
Reception
The game has very positive reviews on Steam and received an aggregated score of 81% at Metacritic. As of November 2016 the game has sold over 200 000 copies. Critics praised its fast-paced battles and light-hearted approach to medieval combat, while criticizing bugs and poor single player.
