King Arthur's World

The World

Set in a land from Arthurian literature, the game levels range from standard english countryside, a cavernous goblin cave system, to a cloud realm rife with fantastic beasts.

The Goal

The player's task is to guide King Arthur from his starting base, to the leader of the enemy forces, using the various skills that his army provides to overcome obstacles such as spike pits, enemy troops and even marauding giants.

Gameplay

King Arthur's World plays in a manner similar to Lemmings, in that it is a side-scrolling, unit management game with a focus on keeping as many of your men alive as possible. Units are given directions through the use of a cursor, a feature made easier by using the SNES Mouse.

The gameplay is initially a simple A to B senario, set in the english countryside and towns, with the occasional castle. This chapter is finished with a battle against a Giant, the first and easiest boss. In the following chapters, the player is required to negotiate ever more complex maps, with mutiple levels, teleporting doors and increasingly harder to kill enemies. Each boss battle is more difficult than the last, and needs a large amount of firepower to defeat.

Player Units

King Arthur

Arthur is the most important unit of the game and has many uses, in addition to being  powerful and hard to kill. He is the only unit the player can use to pick up keys, gold and he alone can defeat the enemy leader. Unfortunately though, if he dies the mission is failed.

Knights

Knights are the basic ground troop, effective in hand to hand combat against most non-boss enemy types.

Archers

These ranged units are extremely effective against most enemies, though they are fragile and must be kept back out of harms way. Capable of firing in different trajectories, they can hit enemies blocked by the terrain or in towers. Their usefulness is decreased in the goblin levels, as the low ceilings prevent them from being as versatile.

Wizards

The only unit capable of healing player units is the Wizard. He has three support abilities, used to bolster the players army. These are Health, Strength and Invincibility. The spells affect any unity on screen, and last for a limited time. Invincibilty does not protect units from spike pits, crushers or zombie units.

Black Wizards

Black Wizards are powerful offensive units and if correctly employed, can turn the tide of battle. Their spells are Fireball, Firestorm, Paralyse, Lightning and Apocalypse. Of these, Firestorm and Apocalypse are probably the most effective, dealing great damage to all enemy units on screen even if behind cover. Apart from Paralyze and Apocalypse, the spells can damage the player's troops, so care is needed.

Sheildmen

An important tool in the player's arsenal, sheildmen offer protection from a number of dangers and are highly resiliant to attack. They block the advance of enemy units and can reverse the trajectory of boulders, fireballs and magic bolts.

Barrelmen

The exploding barrels these units deploy can be used to destroy crushers and doors, or even platforms built by engineers.

Engineers

Possibly the most useful unit in the game, Engineers can be vital to winning a mission. They can fill in spike pits, use a battering ram on castle doors, construct platforms units can climb to avoid danger and even build a mighty catapult. Perhaps the most useful ability however, would be their capacity to raise a new home base tent on any flagpole encountered, letting the player recive reinforcements to his front line much quicker.

Enemy Units

Troops

Weak and quickly killed by Archers or Knights.

Large Knights

Powerful and able to shoot magic bolts, they are dangerous to most of the player's units.

Sling Shot Infantry

A weak ranged unit that is mostly inneffective, though can cause trouble if ignored.

Goblin Thugs

Goblin hand-to-hand infantry, they are dangerous in groups.

Flamethrower Goblins

These enemies hurl weak fireballs across the screen.

Demon

Even though there are only four per level, they can appear anywhere and cause mischief. Though they are unable to emerge onto the platforms engineers have constructed.

Witch Engines

A tank like enemy that can withstand much damage, they move and fire slowly.

Zombies

Undead creatures that move slowly and can turn friendly units into other zombies in close combat.

Mutants

Tough enemies who spit acid and excel in close-quater fights.

Cannon Snail

Cannon Snails are deadly enemies strong against most of the player's troops, though weak to ranged attacks.

Bosses

Mac Ogre

The first boss encountered is this gargantuan ogre. Towering over freindly units and virtually immune to close range attacks, he makes his way slowly to the player camp.

Steam Hammer

A Goblin construct of sience and magic, spitting fireballs and unleashing hordes of enemy units, all whilst trying to crush you.

Demon Overlord

The final boss, this vile dragon can tear player units asunder or reduce them to cinders. Fond of picking up troops and dropping them from a great height, it is a violent and fearsome beast.

Environmental Hazards

Spike Pits

Fairly self-explanatory, these pits will kill any unit, invincible or not, that falls into them. Generally covered by a timed trap door, they can be crossed with a bit of skill, or filled up by Engineers.

Crushers

Giant spiked plates hanging from the ceiling, they can be destroyed by Barrelmen though.

Cogs

Following a short track, they are invincible and kill any unit they touch apart from sheildmen.