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Kingdom: New Lands is an extension of the original game Kingdom. The player incarnates a king or a queen riding a horse to roam through the map, construct and consolidate a castle, and recruit villagers to give them a specialty. Every night the fort is assailed by hordes of monsters that grow more powerful as the game progresses. The game ends when one of these monsters grabs your crown.

The player has one main resource: gold coins. These allow you to interact with elements on the map and, most importantly, build a boat to reach new lands.

Kingdom: New Lands uses a system that sits outside the norm. Indeed, there are no indications warning the player about the consequences of their actions (no “pre-feedback”). Thus, the player has no choice but to experiment; otherwise, they cannot make decisions, and a tragic fate will befall their character.

Consequently, the game can be intimidating for people without experience in this genre, as was my case. The first trials are messy, but this learning phase becomes pleasant once overcome—it creates genuine emotional engagement. We can link this to the phenomenon described by Donald Norman in his book Emotional Design: the feeling of accomplishment.

It’s about creating an experience of pride for users who overcome difficulty.

The importance of affordance

When there are no previews or textual indications of an action’s consequences, the notion of affordance becomes primordial. This is why I believe it holds such crucial importance in this title.

I asked Thomas Van den Berg, the main developer of Kingdom: New Lands, about this approach.

Does affordance take a more important place because of the lack of instruction in the game?

Thomas: Affordance becomes a very important aspect if you stop relying on text to tell the player what to do. And as the game progresses, I got better at creating the link between what the player sees and what he guesses he should do. This also forced us to make many objects in the game real physical objects.

Bows and other tools have to be in the world for the player to see how they move and are picked up.

A lot of indie game developers can’t afford extensive playtesting (time, money, or human resources). Was that the case with Kingdom?

Thomas: We didn’t do a lot of playtesting, to be honest. I just followed my gut instinct to decide how much guidance and feedback the player needs. And the result is that there is never enough feedback. The ghost (the first character you encounter, who guides you to your camp and introduces recruiting) is a good example of this. It started out as just a sparkly line pointing to the goal. In the end, it became a ghost pointing and shouting “Come” at you. But this is a fun exercise, and when it finally is ‘good enough’ players find it really enjoyable too.

We noticed a few quality-of-life changes between Kingdom Vanilla and New Lands. Did they occur because of your own will or feedback from players?

Thomas: The Steam forums are full of things. Players get stuck, so for sure we discussed it with them, then we fixed a number of those issues.

For example, the citizens running is actually one of those things to much better show their intention. It doesn’t make them much faster, but it mostly shows that they understand your order. (And that builds a stronger relationship with the community—win-win as long as it doesn’t affect the game too much).

It’s an unorthodox approach you took with Kingdom. We are never sure if we can interact with an element until we see the coin slots. Did you try something more mainstream before?

Thomas: Like marking ALL interactable elements? Oh… that’s ugly!

Did you have a specific design pattern which told you how to design and create each element?

Thomas: Each element was introduced separately; there was never a real design document that outlined how everything should work. So all interactions related to the Boat, for example, were only invented right as we were building New Lands.

Balancing visibility and mystery

Affordance must be manipulated carefully. Giving too many indications on an element risks cluttering the visual aspect of the game and providing too much assistance, resulting in a limp game flow. Conversely, an affordance that is less understandable will turn interactions invisible; the player risks passing by without noticing them, making progression extremely difficult or even impossible.

In Kingdom, a simple coin slot on an element is effective in indicating interactivity—nothing fancy. It is visible, understandable, and minimalist. Importantly, the suggestion doesn’t give any indication of what will happen, so it still respects the developer’s will to maintain mystery.

Key takeaways

• Don’t be afraid to adapt design rules into video games.
• Listen to your community. If there is no possibility to collect feedback via playtesting, there is always another solution such as Steam forums.
• Visibility and understandability are both primordial elements for creating intuitive affordance.
• Do not mark interactable elements explicitly (suggest them instead)—it’s ugly!

Kingdom is a game made by Thomas Van den Berg & Marco Bancale, available on Steam, Mobile & Switch.