About the Game
Build your city into the most powerful of all kingdoms through endless combinations of buildings, units, spells, and positioning. Take advantage of chaotic combos and powerful perks to break the game and become overpowered. Grow your kingdom in strategic ways, prepare for dozens of unique events, and show the world your kingdom can outlast all others.
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From humble village to massive citadel, your capital recruits your units and grows their power. Expand your kingdom strategically over time and build it to survive decades of war and strife.
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From sturdy knights and warlocks, to glass cannon wizards and bombers, to hordes of fiendish imps and sentient mushrooms, there are dozens of units to lead and fight. Stockpile gold to hire thousands of mercenaries to your cause, use dark magic to raise the dead, and harness nature itself to bring down your enemies!
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Each of the kings has a different starting deck of buildings, troops, and spells, but you can loot the rival kings who attack your lands to access cards from their unique decks. Make peace with those whose units don’t fit your playstyle, and declare war against kings with the powers and units you covet, deploying the tools acquired from your enemy to unlock countless combinations of stacking buffs and modifiers to build an invincible army.
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Combine your cards in endless ways – try out insane builds and watch massive armies fight for your crown, survive as long as you can against increasingly powerful enemies, or break the game and watch all challengers crumble before you.
Screenshots
10 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Very exciting patch today! Not only is patch 27 a multiple of 9, but we're also adding big new multiplayer features, new cards, and fixes throughout the entire game.
Update 0.9.2:
Sabotage!
Assassinate one of your enemies with this new event: in year 25, you can now eliminate an enemy king from your run forever in multiplayer. This will help you deal with annoying enemies and give you more tools to strategize across each run.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/c017c8fbd1f30a9002f24379ee1301e2ed0d006c.png"]
Rainbow rotation!
Multiplayer now has a rainbow card rotation every season. Each season will have a pool of 9 rainbow cards. This is gonna be a pretty fun change to incentivize new strategies every season and to make sure there's no perpetual meta in the game. You can check this season's pool by clicking on the deck on the bottom left corner of the multiplayer menu.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/9ae4a73b2c0a3e92262187bf933e610c826ed0c9.png"]
New rainbow cards!
To celebrate the new season and the rotation system... we're adding 3 brand new Rainbow cards to the game!
Obelisk (Tower): gets 9 times stronger every time you lose a life. It's our first rainbow tower!
Smite (Enchantment): a magic bolt is triggered whenever the enchanted troop gets hit. It's our first rainbow enchantment!
Diffraction (Tome): destroys a plot to give you two rainbow cards. It's our first rainbow destruction card!
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/7e33dc04eaef39608fa1bce3cf11bff12d9e5c79.png"]
Casual play!
Tired of the pressure of having your rank at stake every run? We got you. You can now turn casual mode on to play without any stress. In this mode, you won't gain or lose rank points nor medals. To turn the mode on, click the checkbox on the right bottom corner of the multiplayer menu.
Kingly rankings!
Ever wondered who's the best King of Time in the world? Now you'll know. The Kingly Rankings will give you more reasons to compete, try new kings, and reach for glory. Click the arrows in the rankings to switch leaderboards. This ranking will only register the points you've earned with the king in question.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/c05d051ef89f6c675575c657a384801dfcdd6e7b.png"]
A new season begins
A new multiplay season has just begun. As we've explained before: new season means all King rank points are reset. That levels the playing field so that anyone has a shot at reaching the top 9 in the next season. Congrats to the top 9 of this season! You've all won a profile badge that will last forever.
QoL & Fixes
If you're a time traveler and defeated 9 of your enemies, you'll break the time continuum and get warped to year 33 for a final showdown against the last enemy king.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when you lost your last life at year 32.
Broken Cabulators no longer get level ups when using Progressive perk.
Invisibility now works properly with Warpers (enemies will no longer freeze fighting against them)
Added smooth re-roll transition animations.
Added smoother tooltip pop up transition.
Added a loading indicator when the game is gathering end game data from the server.
During a battle, you can now view a plot's tooltip even after all troops are dead.
Steamdeck/Controller: you can now navigate the ranking screen properly.
All UI buttons now trigger proper SFX.
ESC button now works on all screens.
Hotfixes (0.9.2.2)
Portal logic massive revamp: fixed dozens of soflock occasions on Multiplayer. Hopefully this issue should be fixed for good. Please keep us posted.
Final fix for Warper + Invisibility battle freeze bug.
Fixed Mac focus mode double click issue. FINALLY!!!!!
Drastically improved visibility of the expansion mode locked plots.
Fixed a rare bug where sabotaging a king + killing the last king before year 33 wouldn't warp you to the final showdown.
Fixed an issue where manual base attacks wouldn't be triggered at the very center and the corners of the map.
Fixed some Mac artifacts generated by a rendering issue.
HP boosts from Amplifiers are now transfered properly to Base plots in Multiplayer.
Fixed a glitch where Dispensers wouldn't reach bases that are far in the back.
Troop tooltip can now be viewed during battle even after all troops are dead.
Fixed level 3 Camp plot opacity while placing.
Last week hotfixes:
Over the last few days, we've been posting hotfixes and adding them our previous patch note. In case you missed anything, here's the full list of tweaks:
Fixed Warlord AUTO aiming glitch during battles.
Enemy Goats no longer march towards your base.
Perks no longer briefly disappear from your set when you remove the "Expander" perk from your board.
Added a flipped artwork for enemy Dispensers.
Fixed a visual glitch on the Nomads map bottom borders.
If you lose a battle in year 33, the battle isn't automatically over. You'll keep fighting all the remaining kings to see where you rank compared to all of them.
Time traveling until you kill all enemies will no longer soft lock you.
Fixed a exponential math issue with Executioners stats on very high levels.
Fixed a bug that caused Palace to sometimes one-hit-kill enemy bases.
Improved final battle overall flow.
Heavily improved server stability.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when you lost a life in year 32 when playing as the King of Nomads.
End results no longer wrongly show +0 points/gold occasionally. This is was just a visual glitch caused by the delay between your game and the server.
Tooltip now shows added Move Speed properly (i.e when using Leatherworks)
Fixed a bug that caused lives from enemies to come back when traveling in time.
Opportunist perk no longer wrongly gives you gold when an enemy plot levels up.
Fixed a few occurrences of a game freezing bug after using Portals with Concabulators/Shrines. Please keep us posted on this one.
Poison ticks now remove a stack of Steel Coat as intended.
After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected]
Coming next
We're moving full speed ahead, and our eyes are locked on the 1.0 release. We'll keep working hard to bring new content and balance the game. Expect big updates for ALL game modes. We'll be back with more news soon. Make sure to keep sharing your feedback :)
Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters
We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be. It's really important to us!
Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team
Love,
Sad Socket team
Very exciting patch today! Not only is patch 27 a multiple of 9, but we're also adding big new multiplayer features, new cards, and fixes throughout the entire game.
Update 0.9.2:
Sabotage!
Assassinate one of your enemies with this new event: in year 25, you can now eliminate an enemy king from your run forever in multiplayer. This will help you deal with annoying enemies and give you more tools to strategize across each run.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/c017c8fbd1f30a9002f24379ee1301e2ed0d006c.png"]
Rainbow rotation!
Multiplayer now has a rainbow card rotation every season. Each season will have a pool of 9 rainbow cards. This is gonna be a pretty fun change to incentivize new strategies every season and to make sure there's no perpetual meta in the game. You can check this season's pool by clicking on the deck on the bottom left corner of the multiplayer menu.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/9ae4a73b2c0a3e92262187bf933e610c826ed0c9.png"]
New rainbow cards!
To celebrate the new season and the rotation system... we're adding 3 brand new Rainbow cards to the game!
Obelisk (Tower): gets 9 times stronger every time you lose a life. It's our first rainbow tower!
Smite (Enchantment): a magic bolt is triggered whenever the enchanted troop gets hit. It's our first rainbow enchantment!
Diffraction (Tome): destroys a plot to give you two rainbow cards. It's our first rainbow destruction card!
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/7e33dc04eaef39608fa1bce3cf11bff12d9e5c79.png"]
Casual play!
Tired of the pressure of having your rank at stake every run? We got you. You can now turn casual mode on to play without any stress. In this mode, you won't gain or lose rank points nor medals. To turn the mode on, click the checkbox on the right bottom corner of the multiplayer menu.
Kingly rankings!
Ever wondered who's the best King of Time in the world? Now you'll know. The Kingly Rankings will give you more reasons to compete, try new kings, and reach for glory. Click the arrows in the rankings to switch leaderboards. This ranking will only register the points you've earned with the king in question.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/c05d051ef89f6c675575c657a384801dfcdd6e7b.png"]
A new season begins
A new multiplay season has just begun. As we've explained before: new season means all King rank points are reset. That levels the playing field so that anyone has a shot at reaching the top 9 in the next season. Congrats to the top 9 of this season! You've all won a profile badge that will last forever.
QoL & Fixes
If you're a time traveler and defeated 9 of your enemies, you'll break the time continuum and get warped to year 33 for a final showdown against the last enemy king.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when you lost your last life at year 32.
Broken Cabulators no longer get level ups when using Progressive perk.
Invisibility now works properly with Warpers (enemies will no longer freeze fighting against them)
Added smooth re-roll transition animations.
Added smoother tooltip pop up transition.
Added a loading indicator when the game is gathering end game data from the server.
During a battle, you can now view a plot's tooltip even after all troops are dead.
Steamdeck/Controller: you can now navigate the ranking screen properly.
All UI buttons now trigger proper SFX.
ESC button now works on all screens.
Hotfixes (0.9.2.2)
Portal logic massive revamp: fixed dozens of soflock occasions on Multiplayer. Hopefully this issue should be fixed for good. Please keep us posted.
Final fix for Warper + Invisibility battle freeze bug.
Fixed Mac focus mode double click issue. FINALLY!!!!!
Drastically improved visibility of the expansion mode locked plots.
Fixed a rare bug where sabotaging a king + killing the last king before year 33 wouldn't warp you to the final showdown.
Fixed an issue where manual base attacks wouldn't be triggered at the very center and the corners of the map.
Fixed some Mac artifacts generated by a rendering issue.
HP boosts from Amplifiers are now transfered properly to Base plots in Multiplayer.
Fixed a glitch where Dispensers wouldn't reach bases that are far in the back.
Troop tooltip can now be viewed during battle even after all troops are dead.
Fixed level 3 Camp plot opacity while placing.
Last week hotfixes:
Over the last few days, we've been posting hotfixes and adding them our previous patch note. In case you missed anything, here's the full list of tweaks:
Fixed Warlord AUTO aiming glitch during battles.
Enemy Goats no longer march towards your base.
Perks no longer briefly disappear from your set when you remove the "Expander" perk from your board.
Added a flipped artwork for enemy Dispensers.
Fixed a visual glitch on the Nomads map bottom borders.
If you lose a battle in year 33, the battle isn't automatically over. You'll keep fighting all the remaining kings to see where you rank compared to all of them.
Time traveling until you kill all enemies will no longer soft lock you.
Fixed a exponential math issue with Executioners stats on very high levels.
Fixed a bug that caused Palace to sometimes one-hit-kill enemy bases.
Improved final battle overall flow.
Heavily improved server stability.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when you lost a life in year 32 when playing as the King of Nomads.
End results no longer wrongly show +0 points/gold occasionally. This is was just a visual glitch caused by the delay between your game and the server.
Tooltip now shows added Move Speed properly (i.e when using Leatherworks)
Fixed a bug that caused lives from enemies to come back when traveling in time.
Opportunist perk no longer wrongly gives you gold when an enemy plot levels up.
Fixed a few occurrences of a game freezing bug after using Portals with Concabulators/Shrines. Please keep us posted on this one.
Poison ticks now remove a stack of Steel Coat as intended.
After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected]
Coming next
We're moving full speed ahead, and our eyes are locked on the 1.0 release. We'll keep working hard to bring new content and balance the game. Expect big updates for ALL game modes. We'll be back with more news soon. Make sure to keep sharing your feedback :)
Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters
We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be. It's really important to us!
Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team
Love,
Sad Socket team
You've given your feedback, we've studied the data, and a big improvement is coming to multiplayer today.
In this patch, we'll tweak some key design decisions on the multiplayer loop to game the game more fair and straightforward. We restructured a few things, keeping the core of what was working and improving what wasn't. As always, we're also adding new QoL features and fixing reported issues!
0.9.1:
A better multiplayer flow
One of the things we heard the most in this first week of Multiplayer was the lack of clarity on the interactions between you and your enemies. The other was questions about fairness regarding year 33 and The Angel battle. Our main goal is to make things more fair and to make sure people understand exactly what it takes to win a game. And with that in mind we're introducing a new loop that we're really excited about.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/8175de8fd5db700c8d45bc0dda96eaf8a04833d1.png"]
Here's how the new flow works:
Enemies now only lose lives when you beat them directly. This means you'll have to defeat all kings with your own hands!
You'll start at war against 3 kings, like in single player.
Every battle, either you or your direct opponent will lose one life.
Every time a king loses all their lives, it's time to make war with a new one.
When you reach year 33, the surviving kings face each other in year 33 in a final showdown.
The final showdown consists of individual face-offs between you and each survivor. Instead of the angel, the final battle is between you and the builds you were facing the whole game.
We believe those changes will make multiplayer runs feel much more fair and straightforward. You're in control of who you defeat and how you defeat them. Diplomacy and king re-rolls will play a much bigger role in this new model, as you can now adjust your strategy to take down kings or avoid them until the last minute. Not to mention the new ending will solve all the current current issues with year 33.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/ca4408eb3fa7deed62c5d2b00ef1fc73ab8ce949.png"]
Streak points
You will now gain bonus rank points if you finish first two or more runs in a row. This will help new advanced players climb the ladders faster.
Improved cheating prevention
We analyzed over 100.000 runs and implemented new filters that should be addressing several issues with cheaters. People can't ALT+F4 their way out of losing rank points anymore either.
A new season begins
Each season is intended to last 9 days. But with this big changes, we felt it'd be only fair to give everyone a fresh start. As we've explained before: new season means all King rank points are reset. That levels the playing field so that anyone has a shot at reaching the top 9 in the next season.
Congrats to the top 9 of this season! You've all won a profile badge that will last forever.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/8945cef74380decb28b7da9c051ee0fad134b723.png"]
QoL & Balancing
You now have 5 lives in Multiplayer!
Tweaked troop cards high-end level up stats so they scale a little faster. The goal is to balance out the differences between troop builds and base builds. Troops should be stronger now!
Regression now works with Broken Cabulators and Broken Gachas!
Removed Moderate perk to encourage more diversification. We will add a new Multiplayer perk to replace it.
Balance now only works with troop cards (as it was always intended).
Citadels no longer insta-kill Walls (this perk is intended to work exclusively with troops)
Palace no longer one-hit kills other bases (unintended interaction).
Palace no longer gets gold when hitting a unit with Steel Coat that doesn't actually die.
Pagoda Ghosts will now be spawned more evenly (instead of all being spawned in a single frame while on AUTO)
Fixed a glitch that was giving Paladins with Balance more HP than the actual damage gained.
Heavily Improved cheat prevention system.
Drastically improved the matchmaking formula.
Exploit prevention: if you force quit the game intentionally during a run, you will now finish last.
Pause screen now displays the current rank you're playing in.
A MISSION COMPLETE pop-up will appear whenever you complete a mission for clarity.
Pause screen now displays customized enemy king icons.
Steamdeck UI improvements
Fixes
Fixed Warlord AUTO aiming glitch during battles.
Enemy Goats no longer march towards your base.
Perks no longer briefly disappear from your set when you remove the "Expander" perk from your board.
Added a flipped artwork for enemy Dispensers.
Fixed a visual glitch on the Nomads map bottom borders.
Hotfixes (0.9.1.2)
If you lose a battle in year 33, the battle isn't automatically over. You'll keep fighting all the remaining kings to see where you rank compared to all of them.
Time traveling until you kill all enemies will no longer soft lock you. Once you defeat everyone, you break time continuum and is warped to the final battle.
Fixed a exponential math issue with Executioners stats on very high levels.
Fixed a bug that caused Palace to sometimes one-hit-kill enemy bases.
Improved final battle overall flow.
Heavily improved server stability.
Hotfixes (0.9.1.3)
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when you lost a life in year 32 when playing as the King of Nomads.
End results no longer wrongly show +0 points/gold occasionally. This is was just a visual glitch caused by the delay between your game and the server.
Tooltip now shows added Move Speed properly (i.e when using Leatherworks)
Fixed a bug that caused lives from enemies to come back when traveling in time.
Opportunist perk no longer wrongly gives you gold when an enemy plot levels up.
Fixed a few occurrences of a game freezing bug after using Portals with Concabulators/Shrines. Please keep us posted on this one.
Poison ticks now remove a stack of Steel Coat as intended.
After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected]
Some notes on our vision for Multiplayer
We've been super stoked with the overwhelmingly positive reactions we've been getting with the new game mode. Thank you so much! But of course, we've also gotten a few other questions, requests and complaints, and we'd like to address them here so that you know our thoughts with transparency.
1. On async:
Some people might not be familiar with this term, but it's a key part of our game design. Async multiplayer means you're fighting against "ghosts" of real players who played before you. It's a very common kind of multiplayer on strategy games. This system is perfect for 9 Kings due to the single player nature of the game. We want players to have the time to think and make insane moves. We don't want people to have to wait for a play where your enemy drew 30 cards. We want our servers to handle hundreds of thousands of units battling in real time. The current design protects the core of 9 Kings we've always envisioned and mixes things we love about both single player and multiplayer games. A live PVP service means making a new game from scratch. Programming wise, design wise, server capabilities wise. A game that just isn't... 9 Kings. This is not to say that in the future, after the 9 Kings is a complete game, we couldn't explore a new project with that nature. But our only goal as of today is to make the 9 Kings you know the best game it can be.
2. On playing with friends:
We're working to implement features that will allow more ways to interact with your friends in multiplayer.
3. On multiplayer difficulty: This week we went from 1000 to 50.000 players on multiplayer. We couldn't be happier, but it's important to understand that this means the game might be harder as there's more competition. We know fighting against some OP builds can be frustrating. And we're working hard to balance the ladders and filter out outliers so that everyone can have fun. There is a system in place that filters out the most OP runs from matchmaking (the % varies according to rank). The more people play, the more the ranks will adjust themselves. We'll keep finessing the filters to make things fun for everyone.
4. On King rank:
King rank is intended to be our version of a pro-level ELO competition. This means it will be ruthless, and the more people join the game and get better at it, the harder it will become. Like on most multiplayer games, this is a rank intended for 1% of the player base, and we hope you understand you might enjoy yourself more at Prince rank, for example. The reason 9 kings has 9 ranks, besides the running joke with the number 9, is the very intentional fact that we wanted there to be a rank for all kinds of players. We will be adding new leaderboards soon so that everyone has something to look forward to and the means to reach royal glory.
5. On bots:
There are no bots playing against you. All runs you face were played by real players. There never were and there never will be bots in our matchmaking. Believe us, it'd be much harder for us to implement a consistent bot system than to load your snapshots, haha.
Coming next
New content for all game modes! This week marks one year of 9 Kings EA release. And we promise you it'll be our only EA birthday. We're moving full speed ahead, and our eyes are locked on the 1.0 release. We'll keep working hard to bring new content and balance the game. Expect big updates for ALL game modes. We'll be back with more news soon. For now, make sure to keep sharing your feedback as we flesh Multiplayer out :)
Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters
We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be. It's really important to us!
Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team
Love,
Sad Socket team
You've given your feedback, we've studied the data, and a big improvement is coming to multiplayer today.
In this patch, we'll tweak some key design decisions on the multiplayer loop to game the game more fair and straightforward. We restructured a few things, keeping the core of what was working and improving what wasn't. As always, we're also adding new QoL features and fixing reported issues!
0.9.1:
A better multiplayer flow
One of the things we heard the most in this first week of Multiplayer was the lack of clarity on the interactions between you and your enemies. The other was questions about fairness regarding year 33 and The Angel battle. Our main goal is to make things more fair and to make sure people understand exactly what it takes to win a game. And with that in mind we're introducing a new loop that we're really excited about.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/8175de8fd5db700c8d45bc0dda96eaf8a04833d1.png"]
Here's how the new flow works:
Enemies now only lose lives when you beat them directly. This means you'll have to defeat all kings with your own hands!
You'll start at war against 3 kings, like in single player.
Every battle, either you or your direct opponent will lose one life.
Every time a king loses all their lives, it's time to make war with a new one.
When you reach year 33, the surviving kings face each other in year 33 in a final showdown.
The final showdown consists of individual face-offs between you and each survivor. Instead of the angel, the final battle is between you and the builds you were facing the whole game.
We believe those changes will make multiplayer runs feel much more fair and straightforward. You're in control of who you defeat and how you defeat them. Diplomacy and king re-rolls will play a much bigger role in this new model, as you can now adjust your strategy to take down kings or avoid them until the last minute. Not to mention the new ending will solve all the current current issues with year 33.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/ca4408eb3fa7deed62c5d2b00ef1fc73ab8ce949.png"]
Streak points
You will now gain bonus rank points if you finish first two or more runs in a row. This will help new advanced players climb the ladders faster.
Improved cheating prevention
We analyzed over 100.000 runs and implemented new filters that should be addressing several issues with cheaters. People can't ALT+F4 their way out of losing rank points anymore either.
A new season begins
Each season is intended to last 9 days. But with this big changes, we felt it'd be only fair to give everyone a fresh start. As we've explained before: new season means all King rank points are reset. That levels the playing field so that anyone has a shot at reaching the top 9 in the next season.
Congrats to the top 9 of this season! You've all won a profile badge that will last forever.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/8945cef74380decb28b7da9c051ee0fad134b723.png"]
QoL & Balancing
You now have 5 lives in Multiplayer!
Tweaked troop cards high-end level up stats so they scale a little faster. The goal is to balance out the differences between troop builds and base builds. Troops should be stronger now!
Regression now works with Broken Cabulators and Broken Gachas!
Removed Moderate perk to encourage more diversification. We will add a new Multiplayer perk to replace it.
Balance now only works with troop cards (as it was always intended).
Citadels no longer insta-kill Walls (this perk is intended to work exclusively with troops)
Palace no longer one-hit kills other bases (unintended interaction).
Palace no longer gets gold when hitting a unit with Steel Coat that doesn't actually die.
Pagoda Ghosts will now be spawned more evenly (instead of all being spawned in a single frame while on AUTO)
Fixed a glitch that was giving Paladins with Balance more HP than the actual damage gained.
Heavily Improved cheat prevention system.
Drastically improved the matchmaking formula.
Exploit prevention: if you force quit the game intentionally during a run, you will now finish last.
Pause screen now displays the current rank you're playing in.
A MISSION COMPLETE pop-up will appear whenever you complete a mission for clarity.
Pause screen now displays customized enemy king icons.
Steamdeck UI improvements
Fixes
Fixed Warlord AUTO aiming glitch during battles.
Enemy Goats no longer march towards your base.
Perks no longer briefly disappear from your set when you remove the "Expander" perk from your board.
Added a flipped artwork for enemy Dispensers.
Fixed a visual glitch on the Nomads map bottom borders.
Hotfixes (0.9.1.2)
If you lose a battle in year 33, the battle isn't automatically over. You'll keep fighting all the remaining kings to see where you rank compared to all of them.
Time traveling until you kill all enemies will no longer soft lock you. Once you defeat everyone, you break time continuum and is warped to the final battle.
Fixed a exponential math issue with Executioners stats on very high levels.
Fixed a bug that caused Palace to sometimes one-hit-kill enemy bases.
Improved final battle overall flow.
Heavily improved server stability.
Hotfixes (0.9.1.3)
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when you lost a life in year 32 when playing as the King of Nomads.
End results no longer wrongly show +0 points/gold occasionally. This is was just a visual glitch caused by the delay between your game and the server.
Tooltip now shows added Move Speed properly (i.e when using Leatherworks)
Fixed a bug that caused lives from enemies to come back when traveling in time.
Opportunist perk no longer wrongly gives you gold when an enemy plot levels up.
Fixed a few occurrences of a game freezing bug after using Portals with Concabulators/Shrines. Please keep us posted on this one.
Poison ticks now remove a stack of Steel Coat as intended.
After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected]
Some notes on our vision for Multiplayer
We've been super stoked with the overwhelmingly positive reactions we've been getting with the new game mode. Thank you so much! But of course, we've also gotten a few other questions, requests and complaints, and we'd like to address them here so that you know our thoughts with transparency.
1. On async:
Some people might not be familiar with this term, but it's a key part of our game design. Async multiplayer means you're fighting against "ghosts" of real players who played before you. It's a very common kind of multiplayer on strategy games. This system is perfect for 9 Kings due to the single player nature of the game. We want players to have the time to think and make insane moves. We don't want people to have to wait for a play where your enemy drew 30 cards. We want our servers to handle hundreds of thousands of units battling in real time. The current design protects the core of 9 Kings we've always envisioned and mixes things we love about both single player and multiplayer games. A live PVP service means making a new game from scratch. Programming wise, design wise, server capabilities wise. A game that just isn't... 9 Kings. This is not to say that in the future, after the 9 Kings is a complete game, we couldn't explore a new project with that nature. But our only goal as of today is to make the 9 Kings you know the best game it can be.
2. On playing with friends:
We're working to implement features that will allow more ways to interact with your friends in multiplayer.
3. On multiplayer difficulty: This week we went from 1000 to 50.000 players on multiplayer. We couldn't be happier, but it's important to understand that this means the game might be harder as there's more competition. We know fighting against some OP builds can be frustrating. And we're working hard to balance the ladders and filter out outliers so that everyone can have fun. There is a system in place that filters out the most OP runs from matchmaking (the % varies according to rank). The more people play, the more the ranks will adjust themselves. We'll keep finessing the filters to make things fun for everyone.
4. On King rank:
King rank is intended to be our version of a pro-level ELO competition. This means it will be ruthless, and the more people join the game and get better at it, the harder it will become. Like on most multiplayer games, this is a rank intended for 1% of the player base, and we hope you understand you might enjoy yourself more at Prince rank, for example. The reason 9 kings has 9 ranks, besides the running joke with the number 9, is the very intentional fact that we wanted there to be a rank for all kinds of players. We will be adding new leaderboards soon so that everyone has something to look forward to and the means to reach royal glory.
5. On bots:
There are no bots playing against you. All runs you face were played by real players. There never were and there never will be bots in our matchmaking. Believe us, it'd be much harder for us to implement a consistent bot system than to load your snapshots, haha.
Coming next
New content for all game modes! This week marks one year of 9 Kings EA release. And we promise you it'll be our only EA birthday. We're moving full speed ahead, and our eyes are locked on the 1.0 release. We'll keep working hard to bring new content and balance the game. Expect big updates for ALL game modes. We'll be back with more news soon. For now, make sure to keep sharing your feedback as we flesh Multiplayer out :)
Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters
We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be. It's really important to us!
Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team
Love,
Sad Socket team
Multiplayer is just out. And now our goal is to spend the next days gathering feedback and fleshing everything out as fast as we can.
This week also marks one year of 9 Kings EA release! And even though there was a patch yesterday, we just had to bring you another one today. So here it goes!
0.9.0.2:
Multiplayer perks
After watching hours of live streams and analyzing our data, we've decided to improve the multiplayer perk system in a very simple way: instead of rainbow perks, you'll have access to unique multiplayer perks. Multiplayer perks play the same role as the rainbow perks you know. But you'll only see those that are compatible with this game mode. And they're all unlocked for everyone from day one.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/ed7e14f43bb14b92552ca87fa2a6ef571806063f.png"]
Here's why this is good:
Reduced clutter. Keeping a bunch of locked perks in the perk screen was not doing anyone any good. You might've noticed we like to keep things as clean as possible.
Accessibility and fairness. Rainbow perks are key for your build, and we want a fresh 9 Kings player to be familiar with what the perk system can do and have access to it from day 1.
Same experience. Yeah, rainbow perks are all banned here. Multiplayer perks took their place. But they'll offer you the same experience in a more straightforward way.
Single player interaction. You now have a unique board for single player and another for multiplayer so that you can transition seamlessly between modes without the need to rearrange your board every time.
Room for growth. For now, these are versions of rainbow perks. But we might add new ones that only make sense in multiplayer. Got any ideas? Make sure to share with us in the forums or on Discord!
You already get a new perk! Hardy is a new Multiplayer perk that will increase the HP of your base card.
Multiplayer calendar tweaks
Thanks to the nature of the diplomacy mechanics in Multiplayer, we were able to tweak the calendar a bit, and we believe it can lead to some interesting outcomes.
The first shop event now happens one year later. This means you'll have +9 gold to spend, which means being able to afford one extra card in an average run.
The second expansion event now happens one year earlier. This means you'll struggle a little bit less with plot management in the late game.
Your unlocks are permanent
You might've seen a notice saying that your unlocks might be erased during the current stage of multiplayer. Your unlocked items and your current rank will not be erased and are permanent.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/8425edf0939bff90552ecceaece17ef85a513074.png"]
QoL & Balancing
It now only takes 3 runs to unlock multiplayer.
Angels are now much tougher against all kinds of builds.
Bday victory track was added.
Bases HP were lowered (~20%) to make battles faster.
Base stalemate is now faster.
Created a special in-game state for viewing the kingdom of enemies who already lost.
You now get +1 rank point when finishing first.
You lose one fewer point when finishing last.
Fixes
Fixed a bug that caused Walls to occasionally be converted by Embalming decree, breaking the battle.
When you have no vanity items, the game will now clearly indicate the option is locked.
Walls are now properly displayed when viewing enemy kingdoms.
Fixed some visual overlaps.
Fixed personal rank text layout to properly display bigger numbers (we surpassed 20k profiles!)
Fixed Steamdeck navigation issues on Multiplayer.
Quest Mode fixes
Fixed troop count glitch on Royal Guard (Nothing).
Fixed troop count glitch on Gigantafield (Spells).
Fixed troop count glitch on Rite (Spells).
After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at
Coming next
Year 33: We're aware of some issues with year 33 and we're working as we speak to improve the end game experience. You can expect not only performance tweaks but also design changes to make the final stage of the game more solid for everyone.
Fixes: We'll also be addressing as many reported bugs as we can on all game modes asap.
New content: After that, you can also expect new matchmaking updates (such as a casual option to be matched with your Steam friends async profiles) and new content for both single player & multiplayer modes!
Issues with the server in Russia
We just learned that Russia has blocked access to Cloudflare, which is making our servers unreachable for players in the country. We're really sorry about this issue and will work to find a solution. We hope you understand this is beyond our control. In the meantime, consider using a VPN if your region allows it.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/f4976a901b8dfdd624deccbdde29a29a939aea24.png"]I wanted to wrap up this patch note with a very sincere message. This month we surpassed 1 million copies sold. Not even in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be writing this here, but: thank you so freaking much. Over the last 12 months you literally changed our lives forever, and we'll keep working hard to give back what you've given us. This is just the start.
This week marks one year of 9 Kings EA release. And we promise you it'll be our only EA birthday. We're moving full speed ahead, and our eyes are locked on the 1.0 release. We'll keep working hard to bring new content and balance the game. Expect big updates for ALL game modes. We'll be back with more news soon. For now, make sure to keep sharing your feedback as we flesh Multiplayer out :)
Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters
We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be. It's really important to us!
Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team
Love,
Sad Socket team
Async. Multiplayer. PVP. The much awaited new game mode is officially here!
Multiplayer Mode introduces a massive new way to play 9 Kings. Fight players head to head on async battles and experience the core game experience of the game while being challenged like never before. Fighting against players from all over the world, you will face endless new challenges and will need to reinvent all you know about your 9 Kings strategies in an ever-changing world of enemies.
Seriously, we're super stoked about this patch. This is our most ambitious update yet and we're really looking forward to the next chapters of this journey. Together we hope we can make this a huge chapter that will make 9 Kings bigger than ever! :)
Anyway, with no further ado...
Patch 0.9: Multiplayer
⚔️ Async PVP battles
👑 Fight against 9 real kings armies (and kingdoms!)
💪 Climb 9 ladders, reach the top 9, and become the king of kings.
🥸 Fully customize your king with 99+ vanity items.
🏅 Complete daily missions for extra points.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/5594c9da3e3a50f7bcebaaa16e0f42cc4e3cf23c.png"]
Here's the full breakdown of what you can expect from this brand new game mode:
Async PVP
In this new game mode, we have 9 kings from all over the world fighting to find out whose kingdom lasts longer. But only one can climb up the ranks and become the king of kings. The PVP dynamic creates a fresh and totally new way to play 9 Kings. Be ready for short & intense runs and insane match ups.
An async experience means we're keeping the core spirit of 9 Kings intact, and allowing you to play at your own pace while also changing the game's challenges entirely. You will be facing players who played before you, under the same conditions, and the same rank. You will be matched with players in the same level as you, making it a challenging competitive experience for all kinds of players. But be prepared: this game mode will really test your skills like never before.
In Multiplayer, you'll experience a different kind of battle: Your base card now has HP. You'll start with 5 cards. Diplomacy is made when a king dies. You won't lose lives in the first 3 years (Mulligans). And much more.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/e4fb81340e94de2ac438e45199187c96638f6b1b.png"]
Competitive Ladders
Climb your way through 9 ranks, become one of the top 9 players, and reach ultimate 9 Kings glory. The different ladders will offer a competitive, engaging, and fluid experience. But we designed it in a way you can fun regardless of your ambitions. We'll be paying close attention to the ladder balancing in the coming days and we look forward to see what will come out of it!
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/8425edf0939bff90552ecceaece17ef85a513074.png"]
Customizable Kings
A Punk King of Nothing? An afro King of Greed? A pirate King of Nature? Customize your own avatar and the 9 Kings in ways you never thought would be possible. With the medals you get from multiplayer battles, you will unlock 99+ unique vanity items and victory tracks (more to come!). We had so much fun with this and we hope you do to.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/0aefef965beaf2a4aa95bdbc767e0b684a09c99f.png"]
Daily Missions
Get extra motivation to get to battle with daily missions. Those will keep runs fresh and fun, motivate you to get new achievements and diversify your play style, and give you bonus medals to unlock new items!
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44897639/051e799890eb43546893cfb635838cc3e2c97032.png"]
A new boss, an epic ending
If you're one of the few to make it to year 33, you will face the final showdown. And a foe more powerful than any other. There's no running from him, but you can test your might like never before and keep the score! The final battle works as a tie break between the kings who endured that far, and is intended to keep runs dynamic and fresh. Oh, and if you reach year 33, you'll earn +3 bonus medals!
Unlocking the new game mode
To unlock multiplayer, all you need is to have played the base game 9 times. This is very intentional, as multiplayer requires basic knowledge of the game and its kings. Like Quest Mode, there is a learning curve. And though you can just jump in after 9 games if you feel like it, we recommend understanding the basics of the game before joining. It's gonna be fun, we promise!
Overall improvements
As always, this patch comes with more important tweaks to the game. See below:
Balancing & Gameplay:
Warlord's base now shoots arrows after the last Warlord troop dies.
Removed Nostalgia blessing. It was just not fun enough.
Innovator perk (Progress): you now start with Concabulators instead of Reinforce cards. We found the previous iteration to be underwhelming to most players. This should be a considerable buff to Progress early game.
Ingenious perk (Universal): now gives you +3 levels instead of +5. This is long due, given we now have Regression and a buffed Patronage.
Executioner (Progress) now has 9 troops.
Orbiter (Time) now has 9 troops.
Warlord (Nomads) now has 9 troops.
Camp (Nomads) now triggers its own effect when placed.
Mob (Nomads) HP and damage were increased.
Temple (Rainbow) now gives a 9% boost.
There is now a cap on the number of cards you can have in your hand. It's still broken (36 cards!), but we needed to add a guardrail to prevent closed loops that are just not fun. We want every run to flow naturally, and we don't want to make people feel like they're missing out if they're not exploring an endless exploit. Not to mention we want you to be able to view your board.
If you travel back in time 33 years, you'll break the time continuum and be warped to the nearest boss fight. Like we said in the previous bullet point, our goal is for every run to flow naturally.
Updated Merchant's Rainbow card pool. Each Jack will now only sell Rainbow cards of their own type (we have enough in the pool now).
King of Blood got a lil cool map revamp.
Quest: Against the Void enemies strength was scaled down.
Chaos Mode Quests: Battlecamp, Nowhereland, Riots, Unification are now harder.
QoL & Fixes:
Quest Mode now displays a "Restart" button after you lose a game!
Fixed a bug where some quests wouldn't unlock properly.
Expansion tower animation is now faster.
"The year is..." screen is now faster.
Plot tooltip is now displayed on the side of the plot to improve visibility.
Fixed chest visual layer placement.
Fixed Wall visual layer placement (this was ugly as hell, sorry!)
Improved Warper performance.
Improved Stalemate scalability on very late game builds to prevent soft locks.
Fixed several occurrences of the "ghost troop" bug.
Fixed several occurrences of the troop freeze bug.
Updated localization
*Developer note
Whenever we drop a big patch like this, I try to talk a little bit about our ambitions and vision for the game. So here we go!
We think Multiplayer mode can be a massive addition to 9 Kings, making it more replayable, shareable, and engaging than ever while also retaining its essence. Async design means we were able to mix strengths of what we like the most about 9 Kings and multiplayer games. A year ago, most people wouldn't think that blend would be possible (ourselves included!) and yet here we are. And we couldn't be more stoked.
Please bear in mind: this is an EA version, so you can expect a lot of tweaks, balancing decisions, and bug fixes as we learn with your help. We wanted to be bold with the design of this game mode and this means some things might be broken (that was always the nature of 9 Kings, after all). Of course, it's just the start. We hope you give it a shot and let us know your thoughts.
And for those who are not interested in multiplayer, we have two notes: first, consider giving it a shot, you might be surprised! And second, single player will keep getting all the love it deserves as the core 9 Kings experience. Expect new content & big community requests being addressed very soon. We intend to improve everything in the coming weeks. You can expect balancing patches, more content, QoL, and polishing ahead of 1.0.
After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected].
Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters
We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be. It's really important to us!
Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team
Love,
Sad Socket team
Current Release
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Uploaded May 03, 2026
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How to Install
9Kings.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
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