Kings of the Castle Guide: Tips & Tricks To Getting the Best Times

Zantorian, the greedy dragon, has kidnapped Prince Rupert! The only one fit for a rescue missions is the princess, and that is where you come in! Kings of the Castle is a first-person speed-running adventure where the princess must blaze through the land to rescue the prince, dodging all the traps and obstacles along the way!

To help you go the distance, our Kings of the Castle tips and tricks guide will discuss all the ways to improve your run times. We will go over the power ups, the obstacles, and all the stuff you will have to expect. Let’s get started with our Kings of the Castle tips and tricks strategy guide to getting the best times!

Use the power ups!

The rainbow spheres with the question mark in them are power ups! Grab them and a random power up will be bestowed upon you, usually activating instantly.

• Magnet will automatically pull nearby gems and big gems to you as you pass by them, negating the time needed to go out of your way to grab them!
• Speed will increase your acceleration and maximum speed for a short time. You can really zoom across the land!
• Shield will protect you from an obstacle or hazard. One shield is good for one hit, and they can stack.
• Spring will launch you high into the sky, and it must be activated manually by the button above your jump button.
• Double will multiply all gem pick ups by 2 temporarily. Small gems will be worth 2 points, while the big gems are worth 10! (This power up is only active during the regular levels and not the time trials.)

There are plenty of power ups sprinkled around the map, so you should sprint for one as soon as you see it. They more than make up for the time you need to get them.

First Level: Aragon

The beginners area of the game, and the first level you will start out in. Aragon is a fairly simple world, with the castle in the middle on a tall hill, with a round island surrounding it. The layout is designed to move you in a sort of spiral pattern, as you need to circle around the island to get up the hill.

There is not much room to fall off here, but there is a portion of the island where there are a lot of tall cylindrical platforms with a lot of open space to fall into the water. Be careful here, as it is easy to lose your footing. Other than that though, there are typical obstacles you need to watch out for.

Second Level: Orenfell

In Orenfell, things get a little trickier. The castle is still in the center of the map, but now it is on a wide hill that is surrounded by narrow passage ways. This map is generally smaller than Aragon, but it makes up with a lot of vertical space. In order to get to the castle, you must traverse one of the many narrow paths that often go along a wall.

Although Orenfell is smaller than Aragon, there are way more obstacles, so you need to be on your toes. Keep an eye out for randomly placed spiked mushrooms that will send you careening into your doom when you turn a blind corner. There are also lots of mud flats around too, and they can be a real downer when you are in time trial mode.

Obstacles and How to Deal With Them!

The first and most common obstacle you will see are the spiked mushrooms. These guys do not do anything special, they just sit there waiting for you to run right into them. Running into a spiked mushroom will knock you back quite a bit, and sometimes this is enough to throw you into the ocean, so be careful around these things!

As a side note: if you fall into the ocean, you respawn but you lose some time plus any power ups you were holding onto. Do not let this happen to you!

The next obstacle is the buzz bee. These guys will patrol an area around a specific area, diligent as ever. They will not budge if you collide into them, and instead you will be the one who gets thrown away. Just avoid them like they are mobile spiked mushrooms!

Now, for the evil eggplants. We are not really sure if they are eggplants or not, but they look like it, so we are going with it! Evil eggplants are completely stationary – they fire blasts of goo in set intervals. If you get hit by the goo, your screen will be covered in it, essentially rendering you blind until it wears off. You have to wait a few seconds for it to wear off, so unless you have the whole island memorized it is best to stay still.

And finally, we have the fire statues. These things are like the evil eggplants where they do not move and just spew something every now and then. In this case, it is a hot stream of fire! Running into fire will set you ablaze, causing you to automatically run forward even if you are not actively doing so.

You can still turn and jump, so the best thing to do is not panic and try to keep your running under your control. You move really fast on fire, so do not let that catch you off guard!

Last and definitely least is just plain old mud. If you walk into a puddle of mud, your view will start getting brown splotches across it and your speed will slow down to a crawl. You cannot jump out of mud, so you just have to walk out of it. Get used to jumping a lot, as it will make you prepared to jump over mud puddles.

Friendly flora!

You thought the land of the kingdom was nothing but baddies? Think again – there are some helpful flora around the land that can really give you a boost… literally!

As you learned in the tutorial, those giant flowers with the faces on them? Those are trampolines! If you land on top of one it will give you a nice bounce into the sky, usually letting you bounce on another one. With some careful movement and some proper timing, you can skip across huge sections of the island simply by jumping on these guys.

In addition to that, there are pearl flowers. They look like sea pearls nestled in a little leaf. Running or jumping on these things will send you high into the sky, usually high enough to bring you to another section of the island. Sometimes you might even land on some clouds!

Speaking of which, if you soar high enough, you can actually jump on the clouds. They work just like the flowers – they bounce you back into the air, so you can use them to bounce across the sky. There are certain clouds with rainbows on them, and you can actually run across the rainbows for some extra gems.

Tips for Speedrunning

So you want the fastest times? Whether your doing the time trials or you are just trying to rescue the prince in a timely manner, these tips are for you.

For starters, in general it is a good idea to stay high rather than low. When you are on the ground, you have to deal with the obstacles and hazards, but if you stay high, you can just jump over most problems. This is very important during the time trials, because getting between each point quickly is the key.

It does not take long for you to build up to maximum speed, but you need the aid of gems to go even faster. When you are running at full speed and you pick up some gems, eventually you will see a white flash go across the screen with an accompanying sound effect – this means you have hit top speed.

You will maintain this speed as long as you keep running, but it will be lost upon stopping or hitting an obstacle. To build up speed again, you must reach natural full speed and grab some gems, just like before.

Above all, rote memorization is the most important. When you know exactly what is coming up next, you have nothing to fear. It helps to just enter any mode of the two islands and just run around, taking in the scenery.

Do a few laps and try to make mental notes of where everything is. It helps to use key items as landmarks to help you remember what is around, like the position of power ups, obstacles, and such.

And with that is our guide on Kings of the Castle. With enough practice and some training, you can be a speedrunning fiend! Let us know if you have any other tips or tricks to share!