9 Kings left Early Access on 12 November, with its 1.0 update adding a customisable Joker mode and a sizeable batch of new cards, decrees and perks. Sad Socket and Hooded Horse’s kingdom-building auto-battler is currently £8.99 on the UK Steam store, down from £17.99 in its 50% launch promotion.
The headline addition is Joker, a mode that unlocks after you have unlocked all the kings. It lets players hand-pick a nine-card deck and change rules including enemy rulers, starting gold, lives and rerolls, opening up more room to test the sort of combinations that should probably concern the royal health and safety department.
The official 1.0 patch notes also introduce Daily Mayhem, a new challenge with a random deck, decrees and special conditions each day. That island unlocks after completing all 81 base quests on any difficulty, giving established players something else to tackle once their existing checklist is looking rather smug.
Across the full game, the developer lists more than 130 cards, 140 decrees and 110 perks. There are four main modes covering single-player runs, multiplayer competition, quests and the new Joker custom mode, while the core game remains about arranging buildings and units into a compact kingdom that can survive successive enemy attacks.
The update adds nine Rainbow cards and more than 30 decrees, alongside further balance work for the rulers. Animated buildings, revised menus, extra effects and sound work are part of the presentation changes, with the developer also reporting performance improvements and other quality-of-life adjustments.
For newcomers, the appeal is building a deck whose pieces feed into one another, then discovering whether that clever plan survives contact with an opposing army. For returning players, Joker’s adjustable rules and the daily challenges are the clearest reasons to inspect the new version, beyond the perfectly understandable urge to make the numbers bigger.