Sad Socket's 9 Kings Leaves Early Access With a 1.0 Launch and New Joker Mode

Sad Socket's 9 Kings left Steam Early Access on November 12 with its full 1.0 release, closing out roughly eighteen months of public testing for the Brazilian studio's roguelike kingdom builder. The update lands across Steam, GOG, the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store, with PC Game Pass subscribers getting access as part of their subscription and mobile players picking it up on iOS and Android through publisher Playdigious.

9 Kings pairs deckbuilding with real-time strategy: players choose a ruler, draft cards to grow a fortress and raise an army, then throw units such as sentient mushrooms, blaster wizards, kamikaze bombers and undead hordes into waves of combat against rival kings. The loop made it one of the standout Early Access launches of 2025, and Sad Socket and publisher Hooded Horse are using the 1.0 release to round out the roster and smooth over the systems players spent a year and a half poking at.

What the 1.0 Update Actually Adds

The full release brings four selectable modes, random daily quests, more than thirty new decrees that stack buffs and modifiers for deeper combo strategies, strengthened Rainbow cards and a fresh set of perks aimed at expanding the game's meta-progression. None of it resets what Early Access players already built toward; it layers on top of a kingdom-builder loop that was largely complete well before today.

Sad Socket has also finished the game's localization pass for launch, shipping 9 Kings in English plus 29 additional languages, from German and Brazilian Portuguese to Simplified Chinese, Korean and Japanese. That is a notably wide net for a studio Sad Socket itself describes as an "emerging indie" with offices split between São Paulo and New York.

Joker Mode Hands the Rulebook to Players

The headline new mode is Joker Mode, which inverts the game's usual structure by letting players set their own match rules and assemble a custom nine-card starting deck pulled from every King in the game rather than being locked to one ruler's kit. It is the clearest sign of where 9 Kings is heading post-launch: toward player-authored builds rather than a fixed, developer-curated progression.

The patch also adds a Casual Play option alongside the existing Quest and Multiplayer modes carried over from Early Access, giving the roster of modes a deliberate spread between relaxed sessions, structured objectives and the newly opened-up Joker ruleset.

From a São Paulo Studio to One of Hooded Horse's Biggest Launches

9 Kings entered Early Access in May 2025 under co-founders Rafael Melo and Andre Young's Sad Socket banner, and it moved fast: Hooded Horse reported more than 250,000 copies sold in its first week and over 400,000 within the first month, numbers the publisher said made it one of the most successful games yet from a Brazilian developer. At the time, the game held a 92% "Very Positive" rating on Steam from several thousand reviews, a score that has stayed roughly in that range through a year and a half of content updates.

That early momentum is a big part of why today's release matters beyond the patch notes. Sad Socket is a small, self-described collaborative studio that says its goal is making games its team is passionate about rather than chasing the biggest possible audience, and 9 Kings has nonetheless become one of Hooded Horse's most visible releases alongside the publisher's other strategy-focused catalog.

Price and Where to Buy

9 Kings is priced at $19.99 / £17.99 / €19.99 on PC, with a 50% launch discount running for two weeks after today's release across Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store. Sidekick Publishing is handling regional publishing support for Hooded Horse across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A free demo remains available on Steam for anyone who wants to try the kingdom-builder loop before buying in at 1.0.

A Capstone, Not a Relaunch

For players who stuck with 9 Kings through Early Access, today's update is less a relaunch than a capstone: the core nine-King roster, multiplayer and the quest structure were already in place, and 1.0 is mostly about giving veterans a reason to keep building absurd decks with Joker Mode while the fresh wave of 1.0 coverage brings in players who waited for the full release.