Semifat Sediment

Kingdom of Loathing.

I’ve been playing Kingdom of Loathing on and off for a few months now, and realized I haven’t mentioned it here yet. Like Progress Quest, Kingdom of Loathing is a parody of RPGs, but unlike PQ, KoL is actually fun to play. This in spite of the fact that it’s played through a browser, written in PHP and Javascript, barely has graphics, and has only token social interaction. Why is it such a great game? Two reasons: it’s funny, and it’s easy.

When I walked into the Haiku Dungeon, I assumed the name was a pun or something. I didn’t expect to discover that all the descriptions in there were, in fact, written in haiku:

You light up your torch
Scarf some beans, and let one rip
Your first fireball!

The first time I enter a new area, I almost always laugh out loud; I don’t mean that I type “LOL” into a chat pane; I actually laugh. Nearly everything in the game, from the character classes (Pastamancer, Disco Bandit) to the places (Degrassi Knoll, The Penultimate Fantasy Airship) to the items (Wad of Tofu, Amulet of Extreme Plot Significance), is good for a chuckle — especially when you start crafting odd little items into bizarre big items. It sounds really dumb, but so do the Monkey Island games until you play them.

The big reason Kingdom of Loathing is still playable months later, though, is because there’s no reason not to play. Keeping the barriers of entry as low as possible, it’s free to play and has little in the way of technical requirements. The big twist in the game is the way the player’s time is limited. Every day you get 40 turns, and when you’re done, you’re done until the next day. You can add extra turns by eating and drinking, but even then there’s a cap: if you eat too much, you get full; if you drink too much, you get falling-down drunk. It’s a neat way of enforcing casualness, and it makes sure that the game never becomes the kind of time-sucking grind that most MMORPGs become.

Speaking of time-sucking, I’ve started playing World of Warcraft. So if the posts to this weblog suddenly become infrequent or really halfassed, it’s because my brains have been sucked out of my head, through my laptop, and into the Durotan server.

March 5, 2005 7:03 PM.
Tags: humor, kingdom of loathing, mmog.
Category: games.

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Next: Encouraging casual play in World of Warcraft and Tale in the Desert.