Valheim
Valheim
Game
Game2025
9 Kings
Developer Sad Socket
9 Kings is a strategy video game developed by Sad Socket and published by Hooded Horse and INSTINCT3. The game was released in early access on May 23, 2025 for Windows and macOS.. The game came to Xbox as a game preview on August 14, 2025. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
492 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
84
LovedLoved
328 positive · 64 negative
95% range 80–87%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 328 | 64 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 36 | 5 | 54 |
| Mastodon * | 4 | 0 | 1 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
10,170 of 10,984 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
83% recommend · 237 yes, 47 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 284 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (21,715 of 23,506 positive).
Players praise the game's addictive gameplay and responsive developers. [1][2][3] Some reviewers note balance issues, particularly in quest mode and RNG. [4][5][6] A few players report bugs affecting Steam Deck and game crashes. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [5]
The most recent update has, unfortunately, ruined the Quest portion of the game. Many of the game's quests have been made near impossible, and in a few cases quite literally impossible. The balance of the game has been completely upended by this most recent patch. While I usually don't do this, I would advise against purchasing this game until the devs have addressed the current broken state of the game.
- [1]
I just want to say thank you to the people who created this game. It's been a few years since I have found a new game that I was heavily addicted to. I've been playing games my whole life and have gotten bored of most of them all. The only game I play now days is a custom arcade game on Starcraft 2 called Direct Strike, which I'm really good at. It's PvP and you just place units on a tiled grid and they auto battle. …
- [2]
tl;dr Amazing responsive devs, fun and customizable gameplay, tons of new content still in the works, top tier early access experience I absolutely love this game! I've been playing it since one of the first few patches, and every single patch brings the game up another level in quality, replayability, depth and variety of mechanics, and fun! The devs read every review and are super responsive in acting on feedback …
- [7]
>be me >play as King of Greed >finish campaign >start endless mode >game crashes in year 85 from 6x maxed dispensers and 18,000+ mercs I beat "endless" mode. 10/10
- [3]
10/10 Dev team listens to the players, and makes massive improvements (extremely quickly) that have transformed the game multiple times, all for the better. Different game modes, challenges, nuances, and ever satisfying combos. Nothing beats hitting the one combo you built your perks for and tried dozens of times to set up. Orgasmic. I saw this game go from 7 kings, to 9, to quests, to multiplayer, (there will be …
Summarised from 34 of the 374 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 10, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
9 Kings sits at 84% positive across 392 opinionated reactions from 3 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Critics, per Wikipedia
9 Kings gained global notability after March's Steam Next Fest, where it became the most played strategy game of the event. The Early Access version of 9 Kings was released on May 23, selling over 250,000 copies in its first week and hitting Steam's top sellers global charts. In the first month of Early Access, the game sold over 400,000 copies and has been getting continued critical acclaim from the public. The game has received positive reception for its minimalistic design and replayable mechanics. The game was nominated for Best Early Access Game at the Golden Joystick Awards 2025.
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 492 · most liked first9 Kings is easy to pick up, but just as easy to put back down again. At first you want to explore everything and play non-stop, but the game just doesn’t have much depth. You quickly stumble onto a solid build that buffs your troops, drop it on the board, and… that’s basically the fun part done. At best, you get maybe two or three interesting rounds per King. The draft pool is tiny and a lot of effects stop mattering pretty fast, so you end up grabbing the same cards over and over. After a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →>be me >play as King of Greed >finish campaign >start endless mode >game crashes in year 85 from 6x maxed dispensers and 18,000+ mercs I beat "endless" mode. 10/10
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →[Disclosure: Game provided by publisher] Hey folks, added 9 Kings to my Steam Curator page. This is an absurdly fun little roguelike citybuilder with deckbuilder elements that I just can't put down right now, it's one of those "just one more run" kinda games. store.steampowered.com/app/2784470/...
positive · AI labelView post →The most recent update has, unfortunately, ruined the Quest portion of the game. Many of the game's quests have been made near impossible, and in a few cases quite literally impossible. The balance of the game has been completely upended by this most recent patch. While I usually don't do this, I would advise against purchasing this game until the devs have addressed the current broken state of the game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really like this game, I really do. I wouldn't have 97 hours if I didn't. I wouldn't still play it in my free time when I'm bored if this wasn't fun to me. But it desperately needs work that most deckbuilding games have done. I'm going to go over my flaws first, at least the ones I've experienced. RNG needs balance. I have spent upwards of 5 rerolls looking for one card on a normal chance. Every other card will appear, but not this one. My RNG cannot be that bad. They need to take another…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really like this game and I do not want to leave a negative review, but there is a bug that is seriously affecting my gameplay I play on Steam Deck. During expansion events, after I select a tile to unlock, the touch input sometimes becomes completely unresponsive. Since the buttons are not compatible with Steam Deck controls, I have to rely on the touchscreen. When this happens, I can’t play any cards at all, which forces me to restart the game and lose all my progress. Having to start…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Coming to Game Pass: news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/0... Ultimate: -Assassin’s Creed Mirage (8/7) -9 Kings (8/14) Standard: -Rain World (today) -Citizen Sleeper 2 (8/6) -Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders (8/6) -MechWarrior 5: Clans (8/6) -Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap (8/6) -Aliens: Fireteam Elite (8/12)
neutral · AI labelView post →I could be negative here and talk about how the strategy in this game is very one-dimensional about stacking multiplicative buffs. But the devs managed to make that entertaining enough, it's a fun diversion.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love this game. however. half of the game is an awesome quest mode that has the absolutely worst balancing. so many levels are impossible to beat without an absurdly lucky run, practically zero room for error. I'll go thumbs up when some effort has been made to make quest more enjoyable. edit: the "knight" mode difficulty is a genuinely condescending way to balance quest mode and it seems like nothing changed about the few levels that were mentioned in the update. at this point I do not…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Normally don't write reviews, but one review I read is just full of lies: "The most recent update has, unfortunately, ruined the Quest portion of the game. Many of the game's quests have been made near impossible, and in a few cases quite literally impossible. The balance of the game has been completely upended by this most recent patch." This is just so factually incorrect. There is ONE campaign mission it has broken. I quite literally did all of them within the past couple days, post patch.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Reducing a kingdom management game to a roguelite format that is completely centered around the number 9 (playable factions, plots of land you start with, different cards to each faction) is already a cool little feat in and of itself. Actually succeeding in making that game fun and letting you spiral out of control with absolutely insane builds is what really takes this one to the next level. The gameplay is not really a deckbuilder but works on a card based system where each round of the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I just want to say thank you to the people who created this game. It's been a few years since I have found a new game that I was heavily addicted to. I've been playing games my whole life and have gotten bored of most of them all. The only game I play now days is a custom arcade game on Starcraft 2 called Direct Strike, which I'm really good at. It's PvP and you just place units on a tiled grid and they auto battle. So I really love tiled auto battlers, which are rare and a really niche genre.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →At the start of 2026 I use to play this game a bit and I recently returned (I play on steam deck). However, support for the track pad on the steam deck is gone so it is no longer playable. I find this weird as it says steam deck verified but let's be honest this our selves, it no longer is. I would have recommended this game in early 2026 but now the game is clunky as it restricts your movements (this also makes the game progress slower) so I no longer can
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →tl;dr Amazing responsive devs, fun and customizable gameplay, tons of new content still in the works, top tier early access experience I absolutely love this game! I've been playing it since one of the first few patches, and every single patch brings the game up another level in quality, replayability, depth and variety of mechanics, and fun! The devs read every review and are super responsive in acting on feedback from the community. I get really happy and excited playing this game…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →10/10 Dev team listens to the players, and makes massive improvements (extremely quickly) that have transformed the game multiple times, all for the better. Different game modes, challenges, nuances, and ever satisfying combos. Nothing beats hitting the one combo you built your perks for and tried dozens of times to set up. Orgasmic. I saw this game go from 7 kings, to 9, to quests, to multiplayer, (there will be more) each having major tweaks and improvements along the way. This is the type…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Developer forgets about exponential growth. Makes unit that copies itself to adjacent tile. Makes card that grows target tile by number of all adjacent tiles units. Several rounds later game locks up with too many units on screen. 10/10, no notes.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I do not often leave reviews, but I would like to say something: 9Kings has a very fun and addicting gameplay loop. Despite certain frustrations, I find myself coming back constantly. However, to anyone stating this game is balanced: I could not imagine exclaiming such a blatant lie. 9Kings is unbalanced, and I would go so far as to say this is simply a matter of fact at this point in development. I predict 9Kings will be on an eternal journey for balance and fail to ever truly reach it,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I joined the game when the 9th King was released. At first, I thought that only 9 cards per King was a small number, even if you get cards from your opponents during your run. But the sheer number of different options possible with this limited pool of cards is incredible. Hats off to the developers. This is a fantastic game, and I'm already looking forward to version 1.0.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Coming soon to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass PC: Assassin’s Creed Mirage, 9 Kings (Games Preview), Rain World, and more! news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/0...
neutral · AI labelView post →Was super pumped to see the addition of multiplay to this game only to realize that there is no private lobby addition. With no way for me to play with or against my friend what is the point of multiplayer. SIGH
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This was true when they gave me a copy of 9 Kings, an absolutely absurd game that I'd kept playing all night and couldn't stop, because... Just one more run! I had to try again, next thing I know it was 6am!
positive · AI labelView post →Wonderful new week to you all! 🙂 Today, we're checking out @hoodedhorse.bsky.social next new game 9 Kings. It's a deckbuilder though so I may need help 😬 ❄ twitch.tv/2dkiri
neutral · AI labelView post →New Xbox Game Pass Games 8.5 - Rain World 8.7 - Assassin’s Creed Mirage 8.12 - Aliens: Fireteam Elite 8.14 - 9 Kings Standard 8.6 - Citizen Sleeper 2 - MechWarrior 5: Clans - Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders - Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/0...
neutral · AI labelView post →As someone with a visual disability their are too many inaccessible pieces of important information in the game. These could be corrected with QOL features. Here are some examples. At the start of a run the kings I'm fighting against briefly show up and disappear with no way to tell which they are. I believe there are icons for them in teh ESC menu, but no tool tips with names. knowing this seems important for learning to adjust what should be in my plots. Prophecies are meaningless for me.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →9 Kings storms into Early Access on May 23rd — armed with seven playable kings, game-breaking Merchant cards, and a war that now lasts 33 years. Check out the full details here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2784470/view/544479038741152877
neutral · AI labelView post →I have over 400 hours. It was great until the last update. They messed with the card probabilities and took the fun out: they've done that cheap roguelite trick of making essential items less likely to appear as a way of making the game "harder". Is it fun to re-roll the king of time 8 times after round 1 and got 0 troop cards? No. Is it fun to go with a build then have the loot give you none of the cards for that build even though they show up regularly in other rounds? No. Also, they added…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Example, early 2000s, my #videogame team is set out to pick a project. The pitches: -A gritty zombie survival open world game -Marvel THE ULTIMATES (we had done Hulk Ultimate Destruction) -A Lord of the Rings Game where you play the last of the 9 Kings trying to keep the rings from Sauron
neutral · AI labelView post →Interesting and very unique litle game Worth a try for some autobattling fun
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →9 Kings has the potential to be such a fun and engaging card roguelite. Having 9 different factions, each with a distinct theme and identity is simple but very refreshing. The pixel art style and design of each card is lovely to look at and the game is pretty intuitive to pick up. However, the main issue about this game is the horrendous balancing, especially in the campagain (the King of Greed challenges have traumatized me). In a normal run, regardless of difficulty, I breeze through until…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →🏐It's not Ball x Pit 👑It's not 9 Kings 🃏It's not Hearthstone But if my indie game reminds you one of them... I'm probably doing something right! #indiegame #gamedev #tacticalbattler #roguelike
neutral · AI labelView post →I have become unhealthily obsessed with this game and I don't know why. Maybe it's because you can have ballistae riding atop boars and spraying darts like Bloons Tower Defense. Maybe it's because each King has an interesting play style and personality. Maybe it's because I've failed the Universe 25 Quest several dozen times and my sanity is slipping. Either way, this game will eat your life. Recommended.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →They sent me a copy of 9 Kings to check out a while back, and I thought sure I'd give it a quick try. Suddenly it was the morning and I'd been playing until the sun was coming up. Beware the horse!
positive · AI labelView post →With Quest Mode this game went from a mediocre time waster to an extremely addictive and hard puzzler I just spent three hours grinding my teeth on an single quest (said with love and affection)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →When I discovered this game, all it had was single player modes, you work your way through the kingdoms learning their combos and synergies and it was really fun! If that was all this game had, I would gladly recommend it. I think I got something like 30 hours out of the single player. Once I finished it, I moved on to other games. Then I heard that they released multiplayer, and I had no idea how this type of game would even be able to implement that, so I was curious and reinstalled. I'm not…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Didn’t get to review this for anyplace, but i recommend 9 Kings for fun deck building with simple graphics store.steampowered.com/app/2784470/...
positive · AI labelView post →9 Kings is a strategy game that is easy to play, but difficult to master. It might look like a cakewalk if you watch some videos showing you the gameplay on the lowest of levels, but once you start the more challenging ones, you'll be in for a surprise. The difficulty gets higher and higher, and even higher than that! The good thing is that (in my opinion) this makes it fun. You learn new strategies, combination of buildings and units, which perks to use, and so forth, when you are facing…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Right now, the game seems to rely WAY too much on RNG to succeed, at least in the 'Quests' area. You go from too easily destroying the enemy and beating the quest, to immediately to getting destroyed over and over. It is in need of balance. It doesn't "feel" good. You can play the same quest 6-7 times in a row, losing in 3-4 minutes, then finally win on the 7th try simply due to the RNG of the cards, upgrades, store, etc. that you are offered, where there are some very OP specific things…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a neutral review, but given that Steam doesn't allow neutral, I've flopped positive. There’s always something a little bit odd about playing a game that, fifteen minutes in, you recognise you do not like, but which you can nevertheless recognise is doing well at what it set out to do. This sensation becomes even more odd when the reasons why you don’t like are obvious, but they’re also the exact reasons your partner gushed over the game for weeks and insisted on sitting with you to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Shout out to the wonderful folks @thinkygames.com for featuring 9 Kings in third 3rd Annual Thinky Awards! It's an honor to be featured alongside so many other incredible titles in their strategy game category. Check out the full event on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/3rdthinkyawards
neutral · AI labelView post →Got this two days ago, and I'm surprised this is still early access. It feels like a complete enough game. A fun little autobattler with a good amount of roguelike progression, and a LOT of experimentation. One thing I'm really impressed by is how active the devs seem to be for this game. Two patches in 1 month is crazy to see from a small dev team. The only thing I'm unsure on right now is Multiplayer. That might be unbalanced, but it's what it is... I didn't even think it'd have…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun game to play on the steam deck, takes 30~ minutes on average for a chill run, this is like risk of rain and slay the spire in a different medium. its fun but very based on RNG. I get 2-3 hours on steam-deck, stable 60fps unless theres many troops on screen and then it dips (which also happens on pc)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Anthony / @anthony.megacrit.com's pick: 9 Kings 👑 "The game I had the most fun with this year. A roguelike with interesting decisions that spiraled into degenerate builds that break the game in half."
neutral · AI labelView post →4/10 The game is nice but only for a couple of hours. There are 2-3 strategies that are always working against most of the foes so after a couple of quests the game becomes boring. If you try any other strategy you will quickly die. There is also only 1 music track and the sounds of dying soldiers will be seared into your brain.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →HEY! Here's a thread of games featured at the Latin American Games Showcase 2025 that have playable demos. Hope it helps! \o/ #LatinAmericanGamesShowcase #SummerGameFest For other Summer Game Fest events, please check my other posts. Enjoy! 9 Kings store.steampowered.com/app/2784470/...
neutral · AI labelView post →9 Kings nominated for Best Strategy Game, we love to see it. 😍
neutral · AI labelView post →9 Kings is a roguelite strategy game about making tough choices and optimizing your board to conquer all who oppose you, and it's available today on the Microsoft Store, and in PC Game Pass via Game Preview. news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/0...
neutral · AI labelView post →I don't play video games as much as I used to (usually too busy with work, RP, and drawing), but I like to have three going at a time. Here are my current ones: Serious "sit down and focus" game: Metaphor Refantazio Casual game: 9 Kings "While watching YouTube" game: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
neutral · AI labelView post →The game CAN be fun. As software developer myself, I can tell when there has been some lazy work done though. There is an effort to balance the game, yet there are near impossible quests to play. I've put WAY too much time trying to win some quests, it's just killed my desire to play this game. I don't have the time to devote my life to winning something that's not that important, this is just a game. Probably won't be returning to this game. Next time y'all release a campaign map, actually…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →it's one of those games where you click cards on the screen and then a little squad of pixels makes satisfying noises and makes a big number and the bigger the number the better i'm not sure this formula can be bad so thumbs up
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Cleverly original design for a tower defense game. Has that fun mix of RNG and skill to help you advance and does not leave you stranded or struggling to win until you get really high up with the difficulty, which is still winnable without crazy good RNG. Thought provoking strategy and entertaining as hell. Devs are constantly updating and adding more features which is very refreshing to see. This is clearly a game made with passion and it only gets better every update. 100/10 would recommend…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game that caught me off guard, really fun and accessible game. It's like a tower defense, turned based strategy type thing, with cards, lol. I never played anything else like it to describe it. It's not hard to learn and can get very addictive fast, and works very well on steam deck.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →9 Kings has been nominated for Best Early Access Game in this year's Golden Joystick Awards! 🏆 The Sad Socket team has put so much passion and sweat into this project, so go show them some love! Voting closes on October 31. 👉 goldenjoysticks.com
neutral · AI labelView post →Honest opinion after over 40 hours and "beating" quest mode as well as doing some normal runs: Is the game fun? It CAN be. Does it offer enough content for the price? I'd say so IF you like that content. Is the game even remotely balanced? No, not at all. This is what I'm going to focus on. For the time being there are the titular 9 Kings, all of them decently different, but ultimately all the same anyway. Herein lies the main issue. Each King has like 9 different cards to play around with,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I think this game is a lot of fun. For an indie deck-builder its incredible. From a filthy casual: Pros - Learning different kings feels like an endless amount of fun - The synergies between different kings and cards is an absolute work of art. - Playing through the ranks really tests your skill and forces you out of your comfort zone - Perks give you a feeling of taking control of your power how YOU want to play. - The sprites, animations, and different level designs based on your king are…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A good strat game with a decent level of depth and fun gameplay. Although it need more content and depth to be considered a finished game. Worth the money, hope the devs keep working on it
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →- Quest mode feels untested as it can range from fun gimmicks to unfair hellish challenge. - RNG and luck is more powerful then strategy - Can't see the stats of the enemy, so WHEN you lose it's almost impossible to understand why or what you could have done to prevent it. Was fun for awhile, but has just become a boring exercise bashing my head against RNG till win or lose.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Almost a good game. Main downside is extremely poor balance, specifically in quest mode. A bunch of quest scenario enemies have such insane scaling that you need pure luck to complete them. Like you need 2x dmg or so for the next wave while you only get one card to play and it usually not that significant. Re-rolls and card prices in shops are extremely expensive so if you need something specific for a win you can't even roll for it more than once in most cases so you just restart the quest 20…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Voting is almost closed for this year's Golden Joystick Awards. 9 Kings is nominated for Best Early Access Game. Go show the Sad Socket team some love before the deadline! 👉 https://goldenjoysticks.com
neutral · AI labelView post →General good fun, game breaking encouraged by devs.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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