Bid King Review (PC)

The task is 20/20: submit a bid and collect whatever treasure is hidden beneath the wrapper to bring back home. The reality, however, isn’t the open book that I want it to be. Or at least, it isn’t as transparent as your average auction house bidding system. No, because if it was as simple as holding up a paddle and making a spontaneous bid, then it wouldn’t be a game; it would be a pointless graft with little to no competitive spirit. But, Bid King isn’t a run-of-the-mill auction feud. No, it’s a tactical game of deception, greed and pure blind faith. It isn’t so much about flaunting your cash and blindly following the tracks to claim whatever sits on the pedestal. Rather, it’s about undercutting the competition, as well as using various techniques to lie, steal, and cheat your way to the final score.

While the basic concept behind Bid Kings is to wage wars with other players, there is a caveat here that is equally applicable to all players on the board. See; where most auction houses would naturally reveal the item before you throw your name into the pot, Bid Kings prefers to add a few additional layers to the process. For example, each bidder has a certain skill or set of abilities—traits that either allow them to scan items and reveal their true value, or to take a peek at another rival’s bank account to determine how much they can afford to lose. With four classes to choose from, each King has an opportunity to utilize their signature abilities to procure the most valuable items in the showroom. Or at least, attempt to unlock the rarest items for their respective trophy cabinets.

There’s another catch: treasure isn’t always as valuable as you think it is. To add salt to the wound, Bid Kings also makes a habit of sliding worthless piles of scrap into your peripheral vision, meaning, you don’t always know what you’re bidding on. In some cases, you might know the true value, whereas others might not. In cases like these you have a choice: to lie about the value and outsmart other bidders, or to lock in a bid that will secure your investment. Cash, really, is what makes this world go round, and deceiving other players is what propels the nations to go one step further for the sake of earning a higher payout.

If we take all of the above into consideration, then we actually have a brilliant multiplayer game in our hand—a thrilling and oftentimes intense experience that can and should put a few extra hairs on your chest. And to be fair, Bid King does boast a great concept, with just enough minor details and character-based abilities to foster a long-lasting affair. What’s more, as it houses a plethora of “trophies” and a cabinet for each player to flaunt their achievements, it also offers a sustainable goalpost that’s both compelling and rewarding to latch onto. However, beneath its core premise and snide bidding feuds is a lack of technical polish—a misaligned backbone that, sadly, struggles to accommodate its greatest strengths. And sadly, that’s barely scraping the tip of the iceberg.

Aside from its abysmal server capabilities and dependency on AI-generated content, Bid King does also suffer from some rather distasteful in-game pay-to-win schemes. For example, if you don’t possess a certain ability or tool—an item that another player might have on hand—then you immediately lose any chances of securing a winning bid. It doesn’t matter if you select a “King” with an advantage, because if there is another player who has a higher advantage due to a hidden and, annoyingly, paid ability, then the odds quickly become too high, to the point where you have little to no chance to outmaneuver your opponents.

While there are still some great bones to pick at here, the general lack of support for regular Kings does make it awfully difficult to bond with. Don’t get me wrong, the idea is great. But it’s the little things—the shameful in-game transactions and the lack of transparency, for example, that dampen the overall mood and make an otherwise entertaining bidding process frustratingly complicated and unsatisfying. It doesn’t always work that way, though given that it is an unpredictable game with a lot of shady elements, the odds of ever finding a smooth experience are slim here.

Evidently, Bid King still requires a lot of band aids applied before it can slip into the market as a genuine multiplayer game. Of course, if it can remediate its server problems and remove the shackles from its in-game transaction system to provide a level playing field for users, then it might just emerge as a great little game. But as for whether I’d recommend it in its current state, eh — I personally wouldn’t put a wager on it, at least not until it presents a genuine treasure over a pile of worthless nuts and bolts.

Verdict

Behind Bid King’s shameful attempt to utilize the power of in-game transactions to steer its ship to greener waters is an otherwise great multiplayer blueprint with a lot of character and a ton of great moments of social deduction and enthralling warfare. That being said, while its server issues continue to plague the overheads and the gameplay mechanics continue to favor pay-to-win strategies, it does feel awfully difficult to justify. In time, perhaps, but as of this moment, I personally wouldn’t risk going all in for very, very little gain.

The silver lining here is that, while the game clearly has some additional legwork to complete before it can finally to step forth as a genuine contender in the PvP space, Bid King does have the potential to cause quite the ruckus amongst the fledgling bidders and snide auctioneers of the world. Once it tightens a few loose screws and incubates a neutral ground for all of its users, then it should, with any luck, become a game that you’ll want to stick in your back pocket. The next move, sadly, falls into MindSurge Network & Games’ hands.