Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I first played King of Dragon Pass when it first came out in 1999. It was a pirated version naturally, probably bought at Imbi Plaza since I was 23 years old and just back in Malaysia from university overseas. I’d already known about the world of Glorantha from RuneQuest back then, so I wasn’t completely lost. But as I enthralled as I was by this completely new genre of game, I couldn’t make much headway in the game and eventually gave up on it. I’ve since played many, many other games of course, but I never forgot about KoDP and I was always conscious of the fact that there has never since then been any game quite like it.

After downloadable editions of games took off, I always thought that KoDP would be a fantastic candidate. I was not alone. As far as I can tell, many, many people wrote to A Sharp, the creators of the game, begging them to make and sell a downloadable edition of the game. For years, A Sharp swore up and down that the technology they used made this impossible and the only way to buy this game is to send money to A Sharp and they would send you a CD-ROM in an envelop.

But then the iOS took off as a gaming platform and suddenly A Sharp found it worthwhile to make a port of the game. It was released in 2011 and apparently sold quite well. Then despite the earlier claims, GOG.com managed to rework the original Windows version as a downloadable game in 2012. So now 14 years later, I finally get to play the game seriously and what better way to do that than with a game diary.

For those who know nothing about this game, here is a short introduction: it’s primarily a strategy game with lots of role-playing elements. All art is hand drawn and there are absolutely no animations. Many, many events take place and these are all described in text and you choose responses and options, not unlike an old choose-your-own adventure gamebook. Due to this, the game doesn’t feel hopelessly outdated by modern standard. You control a clan and the objective in the short game is to create a tribe and successfully lead it. In the long game, the objective is to eventually unite the tribes of Dragon Pass into a single nation and become King (or Queen). This game diary will be based on a normal difficulty long game. It will assume no prior knowledge of the game so it will be very verbose at the beginning to explain everything. Later, after things are set up, I will probably only describe the important events as they occur.