The Hundred Year Kingdom

While most games in the turn-based strategy genre will have the player fighting some enemy or another, The Hundred Year Kingdom offers a unique and peaceful approach to the genre that’s both refreshing and relaxing. A casual colony sim where you’re tasked with building a prosperous civilization while aided by some cute anime characters – what else can anyone ask for?

Though some aspects of the city building sim seem a bit restrictive, there’s still a lot of potential for The Hundred Year Kingdom to keep you entertained for a while. The high replayability is a definite bonus, although your mileage may vary depending on how much you enjoy the game’s simple mechanics.

A Whole New World

The game begins with the player in the role of the Creator of a new world. With the aid of a mythical goddess, the Creator has to establish the foundations for a new utopia. As the name implies, your objective will be to create a civilization that withstands the test of time for at least a century.

Some games like Sid Meier's Civilization V offer players a similar approach to building a complex society, but The Hundred Year Kingdom is a more relaxed take on the subject. In fact, one could say that the main focus of the game isn’t even the city building aspect itself, but rather the players’ interactions with the goddesses.

The Hundred Year Kingdom takes great pride in its relaxed gameplay: there are no sudden attacks or diplomacy, or even an economy to take care of. Your only role is to modify tiles and make them produce the necessary goods for your society. While this carefree gameplay is great for casual players, there’s a distinct sense of pointlessness in the long run.

When it comes to tiles, players will be severely limited by the terrain in terms of what can be built. Each turn will let you pick a tile and improve it, and you do that for a hundred turns until the game is over. It’s a fairly simplistic gameplay loop, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t as satisfactory as watching your cities grow in Cities Skylines.

Retro Charm

If there’s one thing where the game is above its competition, that would be the visual department. As is usually the case in most indie games, The Hundred Year Kingdom uses sprite art to convey most of the game’s aesthetics, with the exception of the anime drawings of the goddesses.

These goddesses, which appear on-screen at all times, are all nicely designed and undeniably cute. There are some translation issues in some dialogues, but the developers seem to be working constantly to keep the translation up to date.

As for the game’s OST, there’s really not much to say: the tunes complement the gameplay very well, but the composition is nothing to write home about. The UI is also pretty clear and great for conveying useful information to the player. This is not one of those strategy games that will have you scratching your head wondering what all those numbers mean. This game is all about relaxation, and it achieves its objective with ease.

Pros

• The anime art style fits the theme pretty well
• Great UI that’s very self-explanatory
• Relaxed gameplay loop

Cons

• Can get a bit too repetitive
• Some minor translation issues
• Restrictive building mechanics