Like XCOM, but with Nintendo characters. That was always the shorthand for Mario + Rabbids, but it’s really only half the story. While the original game stuck close to the format established by Firaxis in battle, that still leaves the question of what you do in between. For Firaxis, this took the form of the base building and research queues of the Geoscape strategy layer, itself adapted from the blueprints laid out by Julian Gollop and co in the ’90s X-COM games. This has always been the weakest part of 2012 reimagining Enemy Unknown’s design, in truth, but it plays an essential loadbearing role in providing a break from the turn-based action – even if what replaces it is just another variety of chin-stroking.
Of course, that approach was never going to fly in a game hoping to welcome new players to the strategy genre. Instead, for its between-battle segments Kingdom Battle leaned not on the XCOM half of its equation, but the Nintendo. The result was something like a modern elaboration on Super Mario World’s overworld: a space to be explored, with simple navigation puzzles and a few tucked-away secrets to be found, albeit not one where movement itself was something to relish. After all, you didn’t control Mario, or even a Rabbid, but rather Beep-0, their hovering Roomba-like droid companion, while all the characters with actual legs trailed along behind.