Of Loathing and Kingdoms

I’ve recently discovered Kingdom of Loathing – a great text/web-based game with lines like this:

“Deep within Noob Cave, you find a strange pool filled with a glowing blue liquid. You think back to what your mother told you about unfamiliar liquids found in caves.

You’re pretty sure she said “Drink it! What’s the worst that can happen?”

It has stickmen, much cheekiness and booze! What more do you want from a casual game? ;)

The gameplay is very simple. You pick your character class (Pastamancer, Disco Bandit, Accordion Thief or others) and putter about the world. Click on areas to have random one-click adventures that give you items or skill points or put you in simplistic fights (attack, use item, run away). When you’re at a higher level you can adventure in more areas and get more things. The beauty is in its simplicity. Oh, and the writing:

“In the Haunted Pantry, you’re attacked by a fiendish can of asparagus. Cans of asparagus aren’t normally all that scary, but this one’s got a knife!”

and

“This is a Knob Goblin Guard who’s fallen asleep at the switch. The switch, in this case, is the entrance to Cobb’s Knob. Normally these guys are pretty tough, but they’re notoriously hard to wake up, so you can probably take this one.”

Okay, okay. I’m easily amused but it’s worth playing for the writing alone. Graphics are as basic as they get so don’t even bother if you need animated graphics in your games.

I just have a thing for stickmen.

Links:

• Kingdom of Loathing
• Stick Figure Death Theatre – not related to the game but extremely amusing