Classic: Kingdom of Loathing

By: Guest Reviewer

On: May 10th, 2007

[Guest review by Tommaso Sciortino]

Do you remember playing MUDs on your 14.4 dial-up? Do you remember when computer games featured no animation of any kind? No? Well, I don’t either. But had I been old enough to form long-term memories in the early 80’s I imagine that Kingdom of Loathing by Asymmetric Publications would remind me of the simple days when playing an RPG meant admiring ASCII art and lots of reading.

KoL is a free* web-based multi-player RPG though more than anything it’s a parody of those genres and more. Yes, it has Wizard and Barbarian classes, but here they’re called “Pastamancers” and “Seal Clubers”. Fortunately the writing is actually funny – as opposed to punny – drawing on popular references obscure and common. If you pick this up look forward to an entire quest devoted to parodying “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” and a familiar called “Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot”.

The graphics are minimal. I mean, really minimal. Like stick figures. Basically the game looks like it was drawn by the xkcd guy. It’s occasionally endearing but usually it’s just functional.

Because this game only allows a certain number of “adventures” per day it might serve as a methadone treatment for players coming off life-consuming games like WoW. Otherwise it’ll serve as an enjoyable 30-60 diversion a day.

*Donations encouraged but not required.