By their very nature, consoles tend to be a barren, inhospitable land for certain genres that would otherwise take seed and thrive on PC. The controller is no substitute for a good mouse and keyboard combination as many FPS gamers will attest, and while it can be corralled into some semblance of functionality for real-time strategy gaming, it's not perfect, and the distance betwixt gamer and television tends to make all those units just look like tiny, colourful blobs. But at least developers try, which is more than can be said for the old PC workhorse genre that is the city-building sim.

This year is the first time anyone has made a serious effort to bring the genre to the unwashed Xbox 360 masses; Civilization Revolution boiled down the classic Civ gameplay into something more manageable, and now Ninja Bee has gone one step further with their Xbox Live Arcade title, A Kingdom For Keflings. This is city building at its most basic: you...build a city. Yep, that's it! There's no disasters to prevent, no taxes to collect, no starving peasants revolting in the streets, no barbarians at your gate, no awkward scenarios and no advisors clamouring for your attention, you just build a city!

Once you're done processing that, and really think about it, you'll come to realise that all those things that have been stripped away don't necessarily "dumb-down” the experience, rather they shift the focus squarely on what all city-building sims have always included: a sandbox mode. Your kefling kingdom still harvests resources by the bushel, has a technology tree and a clear progression – you will need a woodcutter before you can use a lumber mill, for example – but outside of this core structure, it's really up to you to decide what you want to do.

Your keflings are pretty stupid, you see, and they won't do anything besides follow you around unless you actually pick them up and then put them down in front of something. This may sound problematic even if you don't have a mental picture of how big a kefling is or how much they weight, but thankfully your character is a giant, so it's not a problem! Actually, your character can just as easily be your Avatar from the new Xbox dashboard, which is a great touch and really helps to bring the whole Avatar concept to life. Seeing a novelty cartoon representation of yourself kick a tiny kefling across the screen or carry piles of logs around is the fastest way to bond with your Avatar to date!

So you and your Avatar are basically responsible for taking these feckless fellows and tasking them with the creation of an empire. You'll do all the heavy lifting when it comes to the building itself, but ultimately it will be the keflings that keep the wheels of industry and economy greased and turning. Thankfully the little people can wear any number of quite literal hats, so the guy you task with being a lumberjack can just as easily become the city's mayor or a lowly goods transporter – just remove his hat and drop him in front of his new job and he'll take to it immediately.

What makes A Kingdom For Keflings such a pleasant experience is that it is always about growth and expansion, and not about fighting other nations or getting wiped out by a nasty case of the plague. It's a relaxed affair that encourages you to play at your own pace. Once tasked, your keflings can perform almost every action in the game, which leaves you free to harvest extra resources, explore the map for bonus items, or just to keep planning your expansion. There's always something bigger and better to build, and perhaps the game's only concession to its more serious roots is the intimidating size and complexity of its build-tree that can easily overwhelm.

But even if it does overwhelm you, the game always has available hints as to what you could or should be building next, and you can select a specific blueprint to display on-screen, so you know what resources you'll need to get the job done and how to go about assembling the structure. Not only that, the city mayor will almost always have some basic quests you can accomplish if you want, which usually just involves stocking a warehouse with X amount of a resource, or building a few components.

It sounds like a pretty laid-back experience, and it is, although there is a surprising amount of depth for those who seek it out. There's also some frustration that creeps in as you progress further once you're trying to manage all your gathered and processed resources, which invariably can end up in a dozen different warehouses and locations. It's a minor annoyance, but it means you need to keep a constant eye on your keflings and ensure they're delivering goods to the right locations, as well as doing a lot of heavy lifting yourself.

Actually finishing a city and "winning” involves completing a castle, and this lofty goal will take most players around 6-7 hours if they really work at it, but your average game can easily extend to ten hours. You can also team up with friends to collaboratively construct kefling kingdoms or just visit theirs and share banners and strategies for success. But ultimately, A Kingdom For Keflings isn't really about an end-game, it's one of those cases where the journey is more important than the destination. As such, it's only as much fun as you allow it to be, and if you're one of those people who always needs a mission objective or a final boss to strive for, this probably isn't the game for you.

Like its denizens, A Kingdom For Keflings is a simple affair visually, relying more on charm than flashy graphics. The environment itself is particularly basic, although seasonal weather effects help liven things up, and the buildings are all distinct enough to be easy to find. Still, as your kingdom grows, you'd long for the ability not only get in closer but also zoom out a bit further, though the latter would no doubt involve a performance hit for a game that already struggles a bit when there's a lot on screen.

The sound is similarly Spartan, with a medley of fairly generic effects, punctuated by a soundtrack that is alright in small doses but will definitely grate after prolonged play. Thankfully the game's controls won't really bother you – guiding a character is always less frustrating than trying to manoeuvre a cursor, and the controls themselves are quite simple and intuitive. Indeed, the danger that A Kingdom For Keflings faces is becoming a victim of its own success; it is much more enjoyable in small doses, but it's addictive nature means your projected 15-minute session can easily turn into an hour or more!