As the Live Arcade title that launched alongside the NXE offering full avatar support, some gamers wrote A Kingdom for Keflings off as little more than an opportunity for Microsoft to showcase it's latest initiative. It's a shame they did, because those gamers missed out on one of the better Live Arcade titles this year.

While Kingdom may not be a comprehensive city builder like those by Will Wright, it's laid back approach and casual style has a lot to offer to those looking for that zen gaming experience. Equal parts city builder, people manager and god sim, Keflings takes your freshly minted avatar into a world of miniature folks who will look upon you to build their infrastructure.

Starting only with a Town Square, the main objective in Keflings is to build different buildings that will unlock different blueprints and skill sets that will in turn let you build more buildings.  Your end goal is to build a castle for the little guys, thereby completing their kingdom.  Several resources like rocks and logs are at your disposal.  As the game goes on, more resources like wool and crystals become available.  Different combinations of resources are required to build certain objects, and different combinations of objects form buildings.

It sounds a lot more complicated than it is.  Let me slow it down a bit.  Let's say you want to build a house.  A house needs 3 objects: storage, bedroom and hearth.  Each of those objects needs so many logs and rocks to come into existence.  You build the objects, then you assemble them in a pattern that conforms with the house blueprint.  Voila!  You have a new house!

As the game goes on each of the resources can be upgraded into new items. For example, wool can be spun into cloth, and later silk.  Objects that you'll need later in the game will need those upgraded resources to be built.  Luckily, you're not going to have to do all this work yourself -- those Keflings can be helpful buggers alright.

Any task in the game that you can do yourself, your Keflings can be trained to do too.  At first the only task they'll need to tackle is mining.  But as time goes on you'll have them transporting materials, getting educated, and taking important positions in the town.

A number of buildings require a kefling to make them run, and while it takes them out of general servitude it also opens up a world of possibilities.  While the majority of buildings are essential to the production process (workshops are where you go to build objects, other buildings are where you go to upgrade resources), some buildings are non-essential but still nice to have.  They might make your Keflings harvest rock faster, or increase your overall score.  But there are only so many Keflings, and later in the game you have to start weighing your "how slow will production be if I take another Kefling out of my wool shearing?" options.

While at it's core A Kingdom for Keflings offers some very basic gameplay elements, the way those elements are presented makes it an incredibly hard game to put down.  There's always a carrot at the end of the stick in the form of another blueprint you want to unlock or another building you want to finish.  You'll constantly find yourself in the "just one more building, and then I swear I'll put it down" zone.  The whole package only took about six hours to complete, which really felt like the right length considering what was offered.  I'd love to see some downloadable content in the future, possibly in the way of new blueprints and new resources.  It's a game I'd love to go back to, but having unlocked all of the buildings and seen what they all can do there's not a lot of reason to go back to it at this point.  Still, Keflings does offer an online multiplayer component that has you building your kingdom co-operatively.  That alone might make a second play through worthwhile.

With it's accessible and addictive gameplay, A Kingdom for Keflings is one of those rare games that should appeal to everybody.  Few games ever fit into that lazy Sunday afternoon chillout period.  Keflings could be it's poster child, and come Sunday afternoon you'd better believe that's a good thing.

A Kingdom for Keflings is available exclusively on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 800 points.  Click here to queue up the download.

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