Little King’s Story starts as it means to go on: with a sense of humour and charm that’s as sweet as possible without tipping over into sickliness. It begins with an introductory animation that explains how the lead character finds a gateway to a fantasy world and is immediately embraced – by a strange chap named Howzer the Bull Knight – as the land’s newest monarch, despite the fact that he’s barely old enough to tie his own shoelaces. It’s not the story that’s so charming, however, but the way it’s told. The animation takes the form of colourful chalk doodles brought to life while off-screen characters hum classical music as an accompaniment. And from there it’s clear that this strategy game is as dedicated to capturing your heart as it is to engaging your brain.

Let’s start with the brain part first. Little King’s Story is essentially a real-time strategy, but one that has been reinvented from the ground up to suit both consoles and console gamers. Its closest point of comparison is Pikmin, but there is much more to it than that. The overall aim of the game is to expand the horizons of your humble kingdom until the entire world map is under your rule. You’ll start out with a tiny village and a ramshackle headquarters, but each time you rid a neighbouring territory of monsters, your kingdom will expand and you’ll reap enough treasure to build a few unit-nurturing dwellings and a bigger castle. Ever so gradually, a symbiotic relationship emerges between the units you train and the territory you unlock. Certain classes of soldier allow you to access new areas – carpenters can build stairs and bridges while miners can clear mounds of rubble – while ridding those areas of monsters will in turn give you the resources to acquire more units.

Knowing exactly which units to take on any particular quest is half the strategy of Little King’s Story. The king himself cannot directly interact with the world, although he can take damage, so it’s important to take the right people with him. Only a certain number can be trailed behind him and while that number will increase with time, the initial restrictions force you to consider the balance of your party. You’ll need to take a few manual labourers with you to open up new routes, but you’ll also need various classes of soldier in order to deal with any enemy that you encounter.

There are no checkpoints that allow you to restructure your team along the way so some quests will feel impossible until either your kingdom lies close enough to the enemy’s borders, or you’ve acquired exactly the right balance of skills throughout your team. Experience plays a part too, with those individuals who survive the longest building up more power and hit points. Keeping these veterans alive is paramount and you’ll need to make regular use of the health-restoring spring baths hidden throughout the environment.

Combat itself is a relatively simple affair in which you throw your troops directly at a target and watch them do all the work for you. Avoiding damage is a little trickier and involves ordering a mass retreat whenever a monster looks likely to lash out, as well as keeping the king and his duckling-like followers out of harm’s way. The latter can be extremely difficult at first, as the tail end of your party can sometimes snake into the line of fire, but you’re later able to buy new formations that help position your squad more defensively.

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