A monarch must survive the nightly onslaughts of "Greed" monsters long enough to secure the safety of their island kingdom for good, and build a boat to travel to new lands, expanding the kingdom.
Kingdom: Two Crowns is a scrolling game based around trial-and-error learning. There is no in-game guide or descriptions of what the various items and structures do. A hermit can be paid to ride with the player (highlight to read - turns out they offer special builds for upgraded towers). It is possible to accidentally wipe out camps by cutting down the trees on either side of them, thus eliminating your only source of new workers. There are shrines that ask for hefty sums of money without offering any immediately obvious benefits. Once you've figured out how everything works, it becomes trivially easy to survive each island by repeating the same steps.
The randomly generated king or queen is limited in how directly they can interact with the world. The monarch can only move left or right, and decide where to spend their money. Gold coins are used to hire workers, build new structures, and upgrade existing buildings. Workers in turn generate most of the monarch's income through farming or hunting during the daylight hours of any season. The winters no longer last eternally like they did in New Lands, now cycling like every other season. There are new boars for hunters to attack and berry bushes for farmers to harvest during the cold season, whereas in New Lands there was no way to survive the winter aside from the players savings. However, there still isn't much that can be done during the winter, so the player just has to ride it out. I took this "down time" in the game to read in real life while I waited for the seasons to cycle out of winter.
Left: Pikeman are a new addition that fish during the day and attack the greed at night. Right:
In New Lands you could set up shields to get knights. In Two Crowns you
get squires, that have to be promoted to knight with a sword from the
blacksmith.
At night, everyone retreats behind the walls in preparation for the nightly Greed attacks - monsters that want the monarch's gold or the crown. The monarch's reign will end if the Greed manage to steal the crown. However, unlike in previous installments in the series, the player does not have to totally start over from scratch. A new ruler is still generated, but build locations and workers are kept.
The current monarch's reign is considered successful if the player can manage to reach the big portal at the end of the island and travel far enough inside to plant a bomb, destroying the portal and forever securing the island's safety. Like before, a boat can be built to travel to new islands. The player will get to keep the gold they have on hand, their dog (if it survived), a hermit, and a few workers (two archers, two craftsmen, and two knights plus their retinues of five archers each)
The Kingdom series re-uses the same premise and mechanics for each new iteration with a few things shaken up or added in for the sake of newness. If you hate the Kingdom games, Two Crowns isn't going to change your opinion, but if you love the series you'll get more of the same formula.
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