A Kingdom for Keflings

Overview

A Kingdom for Keflings is a city-building sim developed by NinjaBee that was released on Xbox Live Arcade alongside Microsoft's "New Xbox Experience" initiative on November 19, 2008 for 800 Microsoft Points. Gameplay revolves around building a kingdom for your Keflings that live in a magical valley. The game features a wide variety of options when building your city, with more than seventy-five commands and over fifty buildings to construct. The player takes control of a giant that towers over the Keflings and issues commands.  In your quest for Kefling Utopia, you'll assign Keflings jobs in order to harvest resources such as lumber, rock, and wool, all of which are upgradable. For example, rocks can be collected and turned into cut stone, which can in turn be molded into brick. This assortment of resources will be used to make individual pieces that, when aligned properly, spring a structure to life.

The game is one of the first to feature full Xbox LIVE Avatar support with the player's character in the game being represented by their Avatar. The game features 4 player online co-op over Xbox LIVE, allowing each player to help create the city and order the Keflings around.

Developer

NinjaBee is known for its quirky style games. They have developed over 20 games spanning different consoles. Band of Bugs and the Doritos-sponsored game are among their latest on XBLA. According to their website  http://www.ninjabee.com/, NinjaBee is a "game portal and development studio" with the purpose of making more hefty casual games. They are a division of Wahoo Studios, Inc.

Title Update

On October 16, 2009, a title update was released for A Kingdom for Keflings. Random players can no longer come into multiplayer games played on Xbox LIVE and break buildings. Only friends of the host will have the ability to break buildings online.  Another change was that transporter Keflings now carry three resources instead of one. Other performance issues and bugs were addressed. Finally, the update enables the game to support future DLC.

Downloadable Content

Since the game's release, NinjaBee has disused downloadable content many times on their forms. They have said that any DLC would be small since they do not have a lot of time to devote to the game. As of April 29, 2009, the DLC pack was still in development. NinjaBee has said that they plan on getting the DLC out before the end of 2009. 
 
Kingdom Pack 1 and Kingdom Pack 2 where released on December 9, 2009, for 160 MSP ($2.00). These packs add new town layouts for the player to build his or her kingdom on. There were no new Achievements added with the DLC packs. The official Xbox LIVE Marketplace description of both packs is listed below: 
 
Kingdom Pack 1: 
  "This Kingdom Pack brings a fresh perspective to the original game with brand new Kingdom layouts. The puts some new and interesting twists on the , and Kingdom Crossroads gives a new pace to   your game. Luckily, the Keflings are still just as nice in both Kingdoms."
 
Kingdom Pack 2: 
 "The new layouts in this Kingdom Pack are not for the faint Giant at heart. The mysterious will force you to  explore every inch of the map to find your way around, and the challenging is definitely meant for the  more advanced player. Previous Kefling management experience is a plus."