We look at Cave to Kingdom three years later.
Cave To Kingdom released on August 6, 2018, and currently remains in early access on Steam. Developed by
Iubisoft System SRL, Cave To Kingdom is a cross-platform strategy sim with a single persistent universe driven by economy, war, and taxes. The game itself is free to play.
The peak concurrent count for the last six months comes from February 16 when the game broached 33 players on Steam. As of this publishing there are two players online with a 24 hour concurrent peak of seven. Steam reviews currently sit at a 37% mostly negative rating, and I decided to check out what has people’s eggs in a binder.
A lot of the reviews point toward the slow pace of the game and how it’s intentionally designed to push players toward the cash shop. This isn’t shocking for a free to play game, but even by those standards the game seems to be very, very slow. According to one review, building your first house takes over three hours of real time.
As another reviewer noted, it would’ve taken them over a year playing the game daily just to get a single cavecoin. Most purchasable buildings need 4 or more CaveCoins. This game will be long gone before you get those 4 CaveCoins however. I don’t expect this game to be around for very long. It doesn’t help that there are in-game taxes, which tax you on what you’ve produced, and anything you sell.
Between being taxed for production of goods used withing the community that aren’t sold and the fact that you have to spend actual cash just to develop your town to sustainability levels this game seems to be doomed to failure. It tells you that you are playing as a Prince/King and starting a new independent kingdom, and then puts you as a bottom of the pyramid lord that has to pay taxes to higher nobles that provide nothing to you at all in return (other than maybe not attacking you).
every building need reeds. and there is no way to harvest them for now. you end up spending so much gold to buy the reeds you end up being broke. those materials u sell, they dont earn you much. and with the tax deductions, it makes things worst. you need to buck up. i’m deleting this game.
Development of Cave to Kingdom still appears to be active, with the latest game update posted on February 10 and the latest developer forum post from June 2. The Cave to Kingdom YouTube hasn’t posted anything since January 2020.
So is the game dead? From a development point it looks like no. From a population stand, kinda yes. It may just be that a combination of genre, monetization, and pacing has made Cave to Kingdom a very, very niche title. It is still running three years later, so they must have someone financing it.
MMO Fallout 