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9 Kings
A fast-paced roguelike kingdom builder. Grow your empire and fight massive battles against powerful rival kings. Break the game with thousands of insane builds to become the King of Kings.
In short, Steam reviewers most often praise “addictive synergistic gameplay” (95 of 104 reviews) and “well-balanced challenging progression” (13); the most common complaint is “unbalanced quest scaling issues” (25). What reviewers agree on ↓
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-30 · quoted reviews as of 2026-05-12.
What reviewers agree on
95 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“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…”
“Interesting and very unique litle game Worth a try for some autobattling fun”
“6 It is a good game for the first 9 hours… In normal play, there are far too many difficulty levels, the game doesn't explain how much the difficulty increases each level, & it doesn't give you any reason to play 90% of…”
13 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“great game, very fun. Fast runs so it's great to pick up and play whenever, customizable difficulty for any level of challenge, TONS of very cool and fun synergies to find and experiment with... basically every faction…”
“9 Kings is a surprisingly fun game. I didn't really know what to expect, and now I've played 150 hours roughly. The gameplay loop is just long enough for the player to explore all sorts of crazy strategies that require…”
“A game you're intended to break and abuse the mechanics of and far easier to pick up than many other roguelikes while being just as, though in my opinion MORE, fun. Fingers crossed for playable Jacks one day.”
12 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“As a 50 year old, I adore the Intellivision character animations and stylings, not sure if this was done purposely or not but it's terrific. The game itself (non quest mode) is the perfect length, making runs quick and…”
“A very dynamic and extremely addictive game! A half-hour session flew by unnoticed!”
“Great value and replayability, absolutely worth it at the current price tag. The quest mode really added some hours to the game.”
11 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“a really fun roguelike, and the updates leading up to the multiplayer update have me excited to pick it back up.”
“9 Kings is a surprisingly fun game. I didn't really know what to expect, and now I've played 150 hours roughly. The gameplay loop is just long enough for the player to explore all sorts of crazy strategies that require…”
“Great casual game. Good and consistent updates from dev. Lots of different play styles for each King. Good game.”
8 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“This game deserves so much more spotlight! The replayability is endless and you can find tons of fun in every combination you might use on your run. You haven't broken a game unless you've played this.. you can REALLY…”
“one of the best base/tower/roguelike defense alot of synergies alot of replayability the mix of units is realy good thousands of possibility ! 10/10 BTW COME ON DEVS SELL ME SOME DLCS PLZ ILL TROW MY MONEY INSTANTLY”
“Great value and replayability, absolutely worth it at the current price tag. The quest mode really added some hours to the game.”
25 of the 104 reviews raise this · 21 of them still recommend the game.
“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…”
“6 It is a good game for the first 9 hours… In normal play, there are far too many difficulty levels, the game doesn't explain how much the difficulty increases each level, & it doesn't give you any reason to play 90% of…”
“Was looking forward to play this after quite a while and seeing it had new stuff in it. Was disappointed by how awful the balancing is in quest mode. No room for error and the enemy at some point just crushes you, no…”
22 of the 104 reviews raise this · 17 of them still recommend the game.
“6 It is a good game for the first 9 hours… In normal play, there are far too many difficulty levels, the game doesn't explain how much the difficulty increases each level, & it doesn't give you any reason to play 90% of…”
“Was looking forward to play this after quite a while and seeing it had new stuff in it. Was disappointed by how awful the balancing is in quest mode. No room for error and the enemy at some point just crushes you, no…”
“It's an okay game. Great for wasting time. There's nothing meaningful here. It's just a game of repetition with some frankly annoying stats. Is it worth a try? Sure, I guess. I wish I could say that I enjoy this game,…”
9 of the 104 reviews raise this · 8 of them still recommend the game.
“Fun game, but can't do achievements. Quest card rewards are bugged, giving one "type" of card on some reward options including store. Plz fix”
“i enjoyed it overall, some of the Adventure modes are a pain in the ass because it expects you to play your cards a very specific way with little room for deviation and you can get completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by RNG. was also fun…”
“Me like to wach number go up. 9 hours into the game, and I managed to get naninf DMG and HP on my paladins. Really satisfying. The only issue that I found, is that the game doesnt autosave quests, so when it crashed, i…”
6 of the 104 reviews raise this · 6 of them still recommend the game.
“great game. i spend hours playing and don't notice. its super addictive. The only time I've had issues, was when i was doing overly large duplication cards. That was only at level 70/67.”
“Neutral. The bones are there. It's satisfying. It chokes out PCs by decent late game builds making achievement runs impossible or huge time wastes not knowing which combo of items will absolutely destroy your PC. RTX…”
“I'm a big fan of this game but it needs some optimization of the late game. My pc isn't a slouch in processing but when you get into big unit blocks (10k mercenaries), it still grinds to a crawl. Fun game tho!”
Counted across 104 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 92.4% positive rating · as of 2026-05-12
“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…”
— a player, Steam review · 2 hrs played“Keeping the old review text for posterity, but the developer responding and making patches to the quest system/overall balance is a huge plus, and fixes the major issue I had with the game. As I mentioned before, the base game is a lot of fun. In normal gameplay there are a lot…”
— a player, Steam review · 35 hrs played“It's far from a perfect experience, but I recommend 9 Kings to those who enjoy "choose between three things" roguelike deckbuilder gameplay with auto battler elements. For context, I'm writing this review after just over 110 hours of play and with all of the Steam achievements…”
— a player, Steam review · 110 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live data self-collected from the Steam API · history through 2026-06 via SteamCharts.
Achievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-10-20.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-07-11. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Regional prices at last sample, in local currency — Steam sets each region's price independently.
Cheapest → most expensive, converted to USD at ECB reference rates (2026-10-20). Relative comparison only.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Save 50% on 9 Kings
9 Kings is currently on sale at 50% off. 9 Kings is a fast-paced roguelike kingdom builder. Grow your empire and fight massive battles against powerful rival kings. Break the game with thousands of in
Patch #31: New Features, Balancing, QoL
In this patch, we're introducing several QoL and balance improvements, while also dealing with all remaining known critical bugs! 0.9.8 sets the stage for 1.0 next month, and most of these tweaks are
Save 50% on 9 Kings
9 Kings is on sale at 50% off during the Hooded Horse Autumn Publisher Sale . 9 Kings is a fast-paced roguelike kingdom builder. Grow your empire and fight massive battles against powerful rival kings
9 Kings - 1.0 Releases on November 12, 2026!
Kings and queens, the big moment is finally here: we're happy to announce that 9 Kings will finish its Early Access and launch into 1.0 on November 12, 2026. Check out our very sick release trailer be
Patch #30: Rainbow Content, Perk Rework, QoL, Balancing!
A new set of rainbow cards is now yours to break the game. A long overdue rework of neglected perks is finally here. Key balancing tweaks will help us make overlooked builds more competitive. Exploits
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Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-12.
| Genres | RPG, Strategy, Early Access |
| Player tags | Strategy · Rogue-like · RPG · Fantasy · Roguelike Deckbuilder · Rogue-lite · Card Game · Deckbuilding · Replay Value · Difficult · 2D · Turn-Based (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Achievements · Full controller support · Steam Trading Cards · Camera Comfort · Custom Volume Controls · Adjustable Difficulty · Mouse Only Option |
| Languages | English, German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese - Brazil, Portuguese - Portugal, Spanish - Spain, Spanish - Latin America, French, Italian, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish,… |
| Controller | Full support |
| Achievements | 54 |
| Official site | https://www.sadsocket.com |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit) Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-750 (quad-core) / AMD® Phenom™ II X4 965 (quad-core) Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 630 (2 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ HD 6670 (2 GB) DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 500 MB available space