Candy Kingdom is a VR Rail Shooter in where we are tasked with shooting up the place while riding on our magic train. It’s no ordinary place, but one made entirely of sweets where the only inhabitants are gingerbread men. Our reason for performing a drive-by on such a place is that some candy has been tainted by black magic and the gingerbread cookies attack anyone entering the kingdom by the orders of a witch. Nothing about them seem the least bit evil, and the story is all told outside of the game via the Steam store page so one can be forgiven for thinking we were the sugar hating villains.
In any case, we start off parked outside of the kingdom and must get our two pistols from the gun racks on each side of the train. Before you boot up your NWA playlist to set the mood for the ensuing drive-by, know that they are not real guns. Your twin pistols will shoot out an infinite amount of hard candy instead of lead, and it is a game geared towards to kids. The main objective is to destroy every cursed candy that you can as your train automatically moves across the rails. Hearts, lollipops, mints and more are your primary targets with the amount of each to be found displayed on your train’s dashboard or after finishing that track.
You have no control over how fast it moves or where it goes, the most you can interact with it is to honk the horn. Shooting is all you have to worry about so make sure to hit as much candy as possible since you need to get at least 80% of them to get to the next level. It is extremely easy to do so on the first eleven stages, but afterward it gets very difficult, probably more than most children can handle. It was nearly more than I could handle as well, level 15 was just an absolute pain and will have you mashing that trigger none stop. Candies are found on rooftops, trees and out in the open in great supply. There are a ton at any one time with the last few levels going a bit over the top for a child’s game.
On the other hand, it will keep them occupied for much longer. As a full-grown man, it took me less than an hour to fully complete all of the 18 stages which would not be great for a ten-dollar game if it had been targeted toward adults. From the moment you first start shooting things you will have seen nearly everything this game has to offer. There are no twists or surprises other than being taken to a bonus level if you 100% a stage. In it, you will be trying to shoot a certain amount of balls that shoot out of a cannon and bounce off a trampoline before the timer runs out. I was not a fan of it, and they can thankfully be skipped if you are not into them either. The only thing you would be losing out on are extra points.
Candy Kingdom does feature online leaderboards to motivate you to do better and compare your score to the rest that have played the game. To signify the end of a level, there will be a giant red stop sign though oddly enough there are occasionally multiple in one stage, meaning you will not know when or where it ends, killing the point of the sign in the first place. Your guns are semi-automatic, firing a few candies per second but mashing the trigger is far more effective and necessary in later levels. The only thing capable of harming you are the things Gingerbread men toss at you and taking three hits will end your run. It can be used to your advantage however, getting hit does slow down time making it far easier to hit more targets when needed.
The graphics in this title are absolutely lovely, having tons of color to them. A lot of the stages mostly look the same with the only difference in them being the item placement. Music fits the theme but is altogether forgettable. There are no boss fights or anything of that nature; it is all about shooting candy with no variation other than the aforementioned bonus level. With how simple and bare-bones in content it is, I do not believe it is a game that would hold the interest of older gamers for a long while. And at the same time having the last levels expecting you to be Neo from the Matrix to beat them. Nonetheless, Candy Kingdom is a flawed but nice game for children to experience VR that does not require them to move around nor requires anything more than aiming and pressing the trigger. Just be prepared to help them out towards the end.
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