9 Kings News

This one is a smaller patch with balancing and performance tweaks. We'll keep listening closely to your inputs in the forums!

- Demon's Altar was buffed
- Endless Mode progression is now milder (fibonacci multiplier now has 1/2 its intensity)
- Improved performance to prevent occasional game freezing after card placement.
- Fixed a bug that caused the game to lag heavily in Chinese due to a font issue (对不起!)
- Overall performance improved
- Minor localization/text tweaks

Please share your experience on Endless Mode with us after this update. As we mentioned in the forums, we're looking for a sweet spot here. A run can't last forever, but we want it to last for as long as it is fun.

We'll share the official EA release date with you soon. But we're working hard to make sure the launch is as polished as it deserves to be, no stones left unturned. Hope y'all understand. We can't wait to share more news with you!

Love,
Sad Socket team

Hey, everyone. We’re finally heading toward a demo version with a stable Endless Mode. There’s always room for improvement, but our focus is now shifting toward the Early Access release that’s just around the corner (make sure to wishlist 🙏). We can’t wait!

Anyway, massive performance improvements were necessary for this one. And here’s what’s new:

• Heavily improved memory usage.
• 9 Kings went on a diet and now weighs less than half its original size in MBs!
• Improved Endless scaling: early years are even easier, final years are much harder.
• Increased max enemy count (did I mention the final years are harder?)
• The two points above mean the "canon gamebreaking year" has increased drastically.
• Balancing: leveling up a troop will give you the same amount of extra units as the first card (i.e you will get 9 soldiers per level instead of 9-3-3)
• Fixed the recurring bug that caused the game to soft lock during late game (this was a hard one, and the reason this patch took this long - please keep us posted!)
• Fixed a glitch that caused towers’ attack speed stat to underperform.
• Fixed a bug that caused Mangler to not be properly affected by DMG upgrades.
• Russian is now available.
• The game no longer slows down when you have no units (it's now a menu option!).
• You can now disable blood particles (this is a family friendly kingdom!)
• Improved card descriptions.
• Improved fonts

We really hope the game runs smoother than ever on everyone’s computers. But please share your experience with us! Since this update drastically changes the way data is handled, we’ll be on the lookout for possible hot-fixes immediately.

Love,
Sad Socket team

I very much recommend the Steam demo for strategy game 9 Kings, so it's with no shade I say that I'm using 'strategy' here the same way a tube passenger might use a hardback of Ulysses to envelop their novelisation of 2 Fast 2 Furious. Griddy placement and tower defence tactics are involved, but this is primarily a game about launching rocks at dickheads. This is fine by me: launching rocks at dickheads is as solid a premise as any videogame needs to have.

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Ok, we'll say it again:



As of today, our demo was played by +200k unique players with Overwhelmingly Positive reception. Not to mention some very cool press pieces. Here's our favorite from gamesradar+.



We also had a lot of fun watching the hundreds of videos from all over the world that came out of it (keep 'em coming!!!)



Seriously, we couldn't thank you enough for all the love and support.

We're not a big studio. We've got no publicist. The person writing this note is actually writing it in between beta test sessions. We're a passionate indie team and your support means everything.

Thanks for joining us on this journey. We promise to keep working hard. We've improved the game so much this week with your help and that's just the start. We'll make it clean, we'll make it fast, we'll fix all the bugs. And most of all: we'll make 9 Kings as freaking FUN as we've always dreamed.

Expect more news very soon. We hope you stick around!

Love,
Sad Socket team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2784470/9_Kings/

Last month we asked you to send us your CRAZIEST 9 Kings builds and we got a whopping 500+ screenshots so far.

So we thought it was time to celebrate some of the ones that blew our minds!

[h2]6. The Greedy Greed Greediness by Trakinas[/h2]

How many banks are enough, Trakinas?

[h2]5. Endless Soldiers on Endless Mode by Prehn0r[/h2]

I mean, at least we think these are soldiers...

[h2]4. Greed of Nothing by Knolle
[/h2]
It looks like every king can get greedy, after all.

[h2]3. One million mercenaries by 千里云帆[/h2]

We're sorry your game crashed here, 千里云帆, but we'll immortalize this beautiful empire in this post (ps. Save Mode will be available on EA).

[h2]2. Cards!!!!!!!!! by Hitagi
[/h2]
Hope you've got a very long sleeve to fit all these.

[h2]1. It's Lonely at the Top by Serenity[/h2]

Over one-thousand-freaking-years. This will never not blow our minds. Also, deleting everything else and just leaving the most powerful elves in the face of the earth alone in the desert was a very classy move.

Shoutout to everyone who's been sharing their gameplays with us. Keep 'em coming, you might be featured in the next post!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3122250/9_Kings_Demo/

Love,
Sad Socket team