New Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Game Category: Casual - Time Management, Tower Defense
Developer / Distributor: Rionix / Alawar Entertainment
Release Date: 15 Mar 2012
Rating: ESRB - None

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Fetch the king Living Water!
Tonight I'll be starting off my review with a very short discussion about Mark Twain. In case you didn't know, this famous American author once quoted that "Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising". That was taken from his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Well, tonight's game - New Yankee in King Arthur's Court from Rionix and Alawar Entertainment, does not need any kind of advertising; in fact, Rionix probably needs no introduction. After all (just in case you didn't know), I reviewed two of their games before and I had some nice things to say about them. Well yeah, that's blatant advertising - but I was advertising for Daily PC Game Reviews. [Ed: Heh! (tongue-in-cheek)]

New Yankee doodle!

Anyway, the whole purpose to all my blathering is this: Rionix is back at it again with New Yankee, but there's however a little twist this time. Unlike their previous casual time management game, this one has the addition of tower defense elements to it.

So, is this the next hottest trend - mixing time management with tower defense in a casual game setting? Let's find out...

Can you feel the static in the air?

Story
The game's story starts off by mirroring Mark Twain's story of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. You take on the role of the protagonist John, who gets sent back to King Arthur's past after a bolt of lightning strikes him from out of the blue. Separated from his wife Mary, John wakes up in another place and time.

Once the game starts, you will encounter an entirely original story that has nothing to do at all with Mark Twain's story. Tossing away your clothes, you exchange it for a new shiny set of armour and at the same time receive a quest to gopher the king on some mystical quest for Living Water. Living water - probably adds more pep into your life, whatever that is. Strange story aside, you might just find yourself snickering at the amusing plot twists!

Listen up good!

Game Play
There's a single campaign with 40 levels available from the main menu. Each level represents an area of wilderness waiting to be built up into a thriving settlement. Once you begin, you are taken on a whirlwind tutorial that teaches you all you need to get started in the game. Other advanced elements get introduced to you as you go along further into the game, so you needn't worry about having to master everything at one go.

At the start of each level, you will have at least one worker who will be wandering around the map. There are also four resource types that you must get your worker to collect, they are: food, wood, gold, and mana. Get your workers to harvest food from fields, gather wood by chopping down trees, mine for gold by clicking on a gold vein, and collect mana by picking up blue bottles or collecting them from wells.

Food is a very important resource

Food is of utmost importance in the game as it acts as the basic currency in the game. Without enough food, you won't be able to chop for wood, mine for gold, or clear obstacles blocking the path. The number of workers you have is equally important; you will need to build and upgrade houses to add more workers to your current pool.

After teleporting to this mystical faraway land, you find yourself having the ability to cast magic spells at shrine-like structures using mana. There are several types of spells that make life easier for you in the game - there is a spell that make your workers move and work at an accelerated speed, a spell that hastens the growth rate of your fields and another one for trees, there's even a spell that will freeze bodies of water so that you can access parts of the map that have been cordoned off.

Look at all that mana at the upper right corner of the map

Unique to New Yankee are monsters who will attack your settlements. There are nasty and ugly green goblins, as well as bleach white skeletons who roam the land, they will attempt to steal any gold you've left unguarded or attempt to capture your workers.

To protect your settlement from thieves, you can deploy your good self by clicking on the monsters; your armoured little avatar will then run over to smite them with sword and shield in hand. Do watch out though as monsters will usually come in from different points on the map to overwhelm you. Luckily, you don't always have to do this, in some of the levels you get to build towers for defense instead.

There's a skeleton at the bottom left

Another mode of monster play involves a group of monsters that march along a prescribed path around the level. If your workers happen to get too near, they will be kidnapped by them and subsequently imprisoned in a cave. You can personally free any captured prisoners yourself. To reduce the possibility of capture, you must ring on a bell to recall all workers back to the centre of your settlement.

There are eight types of buildings you will build in the game: houses, windmills, sawmills, foundries, lighthouses and more. The houses and towers can be upgraded a couple of times, while lighthouses need quite a lot of the wood resource to construct.

How careless... my worker got captured!

Graphics, Interface, and Audio
The animation for the knight, workers, and monsters all look very smooth and exude a charming personality. The structures look reasonably nice considering the medieval fantasy background. The shrines that enable you to cast magical spells do show off some flashy effects, but the hand-drawn terrain bears a mix of cool-looking and mediocre designs (I guess it might be the choice of colours used). From time to time, windows will pop up relating to you the game's story - this features caricatures of the characters you will meet in the game.

The interface is neat and simple. Your resources are found neatly arranged at the upper left corner, while your objectives are shown in the upper right. On the left side of the screen is a simple timer; if the remaining time crosses the horizontal marker, you will not be awarded a gold medal for that level. If you've no time left in the entire bar, you get awarded a bronze medal.

There are 40 levels in the game

The music features light-hearted fantasy fare which felt average by my standards. The game features some nice sounds, but otherwise there isn't anything too fanciful in the total audio package.

Pros:
In my opinion, New Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a neat looking casual game that's sure to impress those who are new to the concept of time management; the simplified element of tower defense throws a nice little twist to the gameplay.

The levels have a range of standard objectives plus a couple of surprises along the way. The former includes collecting a number of a particular resource type, while the latter might involve rescuing somebody.
The game play is quite challenging without being too overly difficult, because of that, you might want to try getting a gold medal for all 40 levels in the game.
The tower defense concepts are very easy going and gel quite well with the time management game play
The graphics are colourful and lively.
There's an interesting twist in game play and story near the last few levels. You will definitely need to cast lots of spells and build lots of defensive structures to win those.

That's supposed to be Merlin the Wizard on the bottom left

Cons:
Tower defense? What tower defense? Truth be told, you'll find only a small amount of this game play style in the game.

There's not enough tower defense levels.
The game features a very lite version of tower defense. It's not what you would traditionally expect, so don't jump head long into the game without first trying out the demo.
With only 40 levels in the game, I felt a bit short-changed by the length of the game. If you are a perfectionist, and don't mind playing through levels to nab gold medals, then it's probably going to take you at least 4 hours to complete it.
The game tends to get repetitive.
You just might get stuck with no possible way to move forward in some of the levels.
I encountered a crash to desktop while playing level 34; expect a patch for this. In the meantime, the level can actually be solved if you put some thought to it.
There are no achievements that you can aim for other than the gold medal for every level.

I can't complete the level!

Conclusion
New Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a nice casual time management game based on the story by Mark Twain. It has it's own little interesting story and plot twists that you can ride along for the entire journey in the game. Although not exactly a full-fledged tower defense game, the game does feel a bit like one, especially in the very last few levels, when you have to face a horde of enemies that march on relentlessly towards your settlement.

This is a good game to while away your time.