Mining. Building. Fighting. Constructing. In the real world, all of these things are rough, painful sorts of jobs that most people aren't very interested in doing. In the gaming world, they're the Holy Grail of entertainment. Enter King Arthur's Gold, a multiplayer (with some single player, too) construction and combat game similar to Terraria and hempuli's miniature masterpiece Masjin. Teamwork is the central focus of the game, and while some players will be busy mining and building, others will head out for direct combat with the enemy. How much more exciting could it get?!

There are three classes to choose from in King Arthur's Gold: builders, knights, and archers, all of which are necessary to steal and hide gold from the other team. Builders can tunnel through the dirt and create a number of structures ranging from traps to ladders to catapults. Knights excel at hand to hand combat and will be your basic go-to unit for staving off enemy attacks. Archers are a bit more strategic in nature and ambush foes as well as fire arrows at a distance. Each team will naturally have several of each class type, and while the warriors battle things out on the surface, builders are below hiding the gold and setting traps to keep foes at bay.

Gathering gold is the central focus of the game. It's a constant struggle between teams to win, and battles will rage for what feels like an eternity. The little fights are what often matter most, however, as you'll tend to focus on small tasks and small areas of the map that contribute to the overall goal. You have a broad range of movement that uses a combination of the mouse and keyboard, freeing you to build/mine in any direction while moving around to stay safe. And you can accomplish some really creative things in the game, such as constructing high platforms that can be bombed to rain rubble down on your foes. Really, your only limit is your imagination. That, and having to wait to respawn after you die!

Analysis: Seasoned retro gamers will likely recognize the visual style of King Arthur's Gold from a fantastic sidescrolling strategy game released in 1994 for the SNES called King Arthur's World. KAG bears a number of passing resemblances to the older game, but it borrows very little from that decades-old (but still fun!) title. Instead, King Arthur's Gold is more like contemporary sandbox games, though greatly simplified and more focused on action and teamwork than building pretty things.

The best part of King Arthur's Gold: the development team is constantly improving the game, adding new features and balancing out old ones. The not-so-best part is the game isn't too friendly to newbies, and even though the single player tutorials introduce you to the basics, when you join a server you'll be overwhelmed with the frantic action that's going on. The learning curve is shallow, though, so just stick with it and you'll see why the game has such a large base of loyal fans!

King Arthur's Gold is free to play for the basic game, but if you really get into it, you can upgrade to premium and gain access to loads of new features (new modes, single player maps, a level editor, zombies, haircuts, etc.), any one of which is worth the price of admission alone. It's a brilliant and strategy-filled war game with just the right amount of creative construction. You won't regret the time you spend digging tunnels, bomb rushing enemies, or using arrows to climb tall walls!

Windows:
Download the free basic version
Upgrade to premium

Mac OS X:
Download the free basic version
Upgrade to premium

Linux:
Download the free basic version
Upgrade to premium