Banana Kingdom

Banana Kingdom is a retro strategy simulation in which you produce units, capture bases and expand your territory to defeat rival factions or meet a map’s victory condition. Its rules are designed to be easy to grasp, with few complicated numbers and randomness kept close to zero, so your decisions have a direct effect on the outcome. Battles can include up to five factions.

Turns and victory

Each turn, you produce units and move them into battle. You win by defeating the opposing faction or completing the map’s chosen objective. Victory conditions include:

• Annihilation: a faction loses when its unit count reaches zero.
• Capture the Castle: each faction’s castle is its home base; losing it eliminates that faction.
• Capture the Golden Banana: claim the Golden Banana, which is said to grant any wish, to win outright.
• Defeat the Banana King: a faction loses if its Banana King is defeated.
• Statue of the Banana God: carry the statue, which resembles a spacesuited figure, back to your castle to win. It can grant Golden Banana Troopers.

Commanders and units

Charismatic Commanders act as your avatars and issue orders to your units. Each has a distinct skill that can turn the battle when its gauge fills.

Each unit is a team of four crew. You can field four of the same crew or mix types, such as one Knight and three Fighters. Defeating enemy units raises your units’ levels and stats. Some crew include:

• Militia: weak and cheap; defeating them does not level up the enemy.
• Knight: powerful and well-rounded in combat and capturing, with modest movement.
• Scout: moves nimbly through mountains and forests and has a wide scouting range.
• Falconer: deals double damage to airborne crew, including airships, dragons and angels.
• Cavalry: a mounted Knight with high movement, slightly higher cost and slightly less power than a Knight.
• Hunter: attacks at range and benefits from a wall of units between them and the enemy.
• Mage: a powerful ranged attacker who is very weak in melee.
• Manta Trooper: easy-to-handle aquatic infantry.
• Orca Trooper: aquatic cavalry for fighting at sea.
• Airship: carries up to two units.
• Banana Trooper: the weakest crew; defeating one drops the victor’s level back to zero.

Bases and facilities

Bases are central to building your army. Capturing them generates Capital, or war funds, which you can spend on units or upgrades. Choosing whether to produce units or improve your bases is an important part of managing those funds. Facilities have different uses, and some can be upgraded:

• Village: earns Capital each turn and slightly heals a unit standing on it; it cannot be upgraded.
• Fort: produces all kinds of units and replenishes one infantry per turn for an under-strength unit standing on it, at no Capital cost. Upgrades let it replenish multiple infantry per turn.
• Farm: greatly heals a unit standing on it and can be upgraded to produce Banana Troopers.
• Watchtower: scouts a wide area, but only in fog-of-war mode, when enemy units are hidden.
• World Tree: heals nearby units; upgrading it enough times has an additional effect.
• Thorn Hollow: a high-defense position suited to holding ground.
• Airship Yard: produces airships that carry units and can be upgraded to build armed airships.
• Tide Fort: produces aquatic combat units and sailing ships.
• Wish Crystal: grants one of seven wishes when captured. After granting a wish, it becomes a broken crystal that provides a small amount of Capital over time.
• Dragon Egg: when a unit captures it, a powerful dragon is born and joins that unit’s faction.
• Warp Gate: transports units to another Warp Gate and cannot be captured. In the map editor, gates can be assigned one of three link types, A, B or C, and only gates with matching tags connect.
• Blessing of Wings: lets a unit standing on it leap two tiles ahead, ignoring terrain; it cannot be captured.

Maps and editor

The game includes nearly 1,000 battle maps, along with a map editor for building and playing custom stages. You can make capture maps with castles or annihilation-only maps where units start on the board. The editor includes rectangle drawing and fill tools, and lets you mirror or rotate-copy the board to create left-right or 180-degree symmetry. It can generate random biomes in one click, place fully upgraded facilities from the start, and manage and share maps as files. Data created in the demo carries over to the full version.

Story

The story follows adventurers playing a board game about foolish people who raise armies and go to war in pursuit of the Golden Banana, said to grant any wish. The story ends with the board-game setting.