Challenges

Challenges are self-imposed methods to make playthroughs or sections of Little King's Story more difficult, in tandem with the various existing difficulty settings.

Little King's Story offers three modes of gameplay: Easy, Normal, and Hard, with the additional Tyrant Mode being added after beating the story in the NTSC version. The Steam release also added several achievements. Due to the game's versatile gameplay, various personal Challenges have been invented by players in order to test themselves by approaching the game with specific restrictions or goals.

Speedrunning

As with most games, Little King's Story has a speedrunning scene. The main category is the "Any%" run, where the game must be beaten is as fast a time as possible and no other conditions, with the world record for this category currently held by Chie495, while the "Complete Key Items" and "Any% - Glitchless" categories are currently held by speedrunner tcbtrio. A miscellaneous category for reaching the third Castle expansion, called the "Gold Castle" category, is also held by Chie495.

The game is run as follows:

• Easy mode and Message Skip turned on
• Usually on the North American version, due to it being slightly faster.
• Wii version, due to its consistency and stability when compared to the PC version.

A record of achievements in the Little King's Story speedrunning scene can be found on Speedrun.com.

Solobo

"Solobo", or "Corobo only", is a condition in which a player must beat a section of the game on Easy Mode without anybody in the Royal Guard, relying solely on Corobo's scepter. The main target for this Challenge is King Duvroc, although the Onii King and Omelet are also doable, as these are the only king battles that can feasibly be done with only Corobo. Almost every Guardian fight is also possible. The following bosses are theoretically unable to be beaten in this way:

• Shishkebaboo: While Corobo's scepter can hit Shishkebaboo, it is too precise to be feasible without the use of Tool-Assisted (TAS) software.
• TV Dinnah: Corobo cannot dig.
• Long Sauvage: Corobo cannot build. Citizens are also required to become taller than Long Sauvage and complete this fight.
• Jumbo Champloon: The Worker Onii heal Jumbo Champloon faster than Corobo can do damage to him.
• Final Boss: Corobo's low attack output means that the fourth phase cannot be completed in time.

One Citizen

In a similar vain to Solobo, the player must take on a boss on Easy Mode with only one citizen. Almost all boss battles are feasible in this challenge, with the exceptions of Shishkebaboo and Long Sauvage.

Pacifist Run

The Pacifist Run challenges the player to beat the game having directly killed the least amount of UMA possible. Kings do not count. The only mandatory UMA are as follows:

• Cow Bones Guardian
• Onii Man Guardian
• Clockwork Knight Guardian
• 2 UMA to answer a question in King Omelet's battle
• 2 Cockadoodledo to pass through Manjaro Cavern in Long Sauvage's battle

Martel's Records Book will not help to keep track of the UMA killed by the player, as it also counts instances of UMA killed by other means too, such as the Rockies that are destroyed by Shishkebaboo's weight, and pencils killing the Onii that use rollers in Jumbo Champloon's battle.

Low%

In this challenge, the player cannot purchase any upgrades from the Power Up category under the Kingdom Plan, use any Weapons or Armor, or buy any other buildings that are not required for completion. This means the player is stuck with 12 Guard Badges and no Defense or Evade Formations for the entire run of the game. Speedrunner Chie495 attempted this run in conjunction with Tyrant Mode, and managed to progress as far as defeating King Duvroc, but concluded that the Challenge was impossible to beat once the player reaches King Shishkebaboo. While Low% has a category on Speedrun.com, it is yet to be completed on any difficulty.

Originally Low% was thought to be limited to 5 Guard Badges, but it was later discovered that at least 10 citizens are needed to finish the game. This means that the player must get two Guard Badge upgrades to beat the game.

Minimum Badges

A variation on the Low% challenge allows the player to buy any buildings or equip any items, but they must not buy any additional Guard Badges to increase the size of their Royal Guard. Therefore the goal would be to beat the game with only the default 5 Badges on any chosen difficulty, however, the furthest a player can get without additional badge upgrades is the Flying Machine, as at least 10 members of the Royal Guard are needed to enter. Thus this challenge must be modified, such playing the game with 5 badges and stopping at the Flying Machine or only getting the first 2 Badge upgrades to increase the count to 12 for either the whole duration (from availability) or just before the Flying Machine.

One-Citizen-Per-Job Run

Sometimes called a Limited Job Run or 1CPJ. In this Challenge, a player is only allowed to have one of each Job Class in Alpoko, with the exception being Carefree Adults. This means that the player must play the game through with only one Grunt Soldier, one Hardened Soldier, one Hardworking Farmer etc. This is typically done on Hard Mode to force the player to be more protective of their people. If a citizen with a Job Class permanently dies, then they may be replaced. This has the side effect of making some Job Classes more useful than in the base game, such as the Eggan and various Carpenters, as they allow an additional party member who can do damage to UMA and obstacles.

Minimum Jobs Run

The player must beat the game having created the minimum amount of Jobs possible. With the exception of Carefree Adults at the start of the game, and presuming Glitches are not in use, there are four essential jobs that are needed to reach the end of the game:

• Either Grunt Soldiers or Hardworking Farmers to leave Castle Town at the beginning. The player must choose between these two jobs for their run.
• Regular Carpenter to create various bridges and stairs.
• Buff Lumberjacks to enter Dark Valley.
• Ripped Miner to open the Bony Tunnel Entrance and destroy three large rocks in Skull Plains.

The player is allowed as many of these four (plus Carefree) as they need, and may choose to play on any difficulty. A glitched version of this challenge may be able to be accomplished with even fewer required Jobs.

Soldierless

In a similar vain to the previously mentioned Limited Job Run, the player must venture through the game without ever using Grunt Soldiers, Hardened Soldiers or the Steel Knight. However, a player may use as many of the other citizens as they want. This forces the player to instead find other ways of dealing damage, such as Animal Hunters, the Rainbow Wizard, or equipping weaker Jobs with Weapons or Armor.