It's hard to imagine Vampire Survivors-esque combat combined with city building, but Super Fantasy Kingdom has saved my imagination some work by mashing these two very distinct genres together. If you haven't seen it before, this top-down city survival game is a little like Kingdom: Two Crowns, The Bonfire 2, or more recently, Thronefall—your classic indie micro strategy where you have to fend off wave after wave of enemies as you cultivate your town.
Where Super Fantasy Kingdom seeks to distinguish itself is by throwing bullet heaven combat into the mix. You have your very own guardian who rides about the battlefield fending off monsters, and as you explore your realm, you'll recruit new heroes you can add to your autobattle lineup, guarding the entrance to your town and blazing away at monsters. Each have their own abilities to combo and upgrades to increase their horde melting capabilities.
It's a curious experience on the whole; calmly caring for your growing township only to pan up the screen and see your heroes obliterating an endless procession of invaders just outside the main gate.
The newest trailer for Super Fantasy Kingdom in The PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted shows off a brand new faction: The Undead Kingdom. Controlling these skellies is a bit like venturing into the Dead Lands in Kingdom: Two Crowns; an alternate mode where you can play as a spookified monarch in your own realm of death and darkness. Super Fantasy Kingdom's undead faction is more than just a reskin: they have their own unique playstyle, which I experimented with in a new demo.
Where the human kingdom has a set number of workers based on houses, you'll raise temporary skeletal thralls each day to meet your resource needs. To speed up your shambling workers moving said resources, you can also build mausoleums, a graveyard, or repair your church, since each of these houses an entrance to the catacombs. This underground portal network lets your undead servants get around more quickly.
You can also harvest tasty tasty rats to feed to your heroes, or build a sewer to passively produce ooze, a key resource for upgrading hero abilities (as it is with ninja turtles). Unlike the human kingdom, many of the undead's resource and processing buildings do their jobs automatically—one of the benefits of an endless undead workforce I suppose?
If you want to try out the regular game for yourself, there's currently a demo available on Steam where you can play as the human kingdom, though if you want to play as the undead you'll have to wait a little longer. Super Fantasy Kingdom is set to launch in early 2025 on Steam, GoG, and the Epic Games Store.
