Video Game / Cookie Run Kingdom

When running is not always an option...

"No cookie left behind!"

Cookie Run: Kingdom (additionally known as Cookie Kingdom) is a non-runner spinoff of the Cookie Run series, released on January 20th, 2021 by the South Korean company Devsisters, after much promotion and fanfare, with over three million downloads preregistered. Not unlike its predecessor, players assume the role of various cute, sentient gingerbread-man-style Cookies, but this time is to build a kingdom for your own ruling, defend it from the Cake Monsters - those thanks to the Witch’s Life Powder also came to life, and unravel the story which revolves around the great ancient kingdoms that once existed on this land. In other words, it’s a free-to-play RPG and city builder hybrid.

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Tropes found in Cookie Run Kingdom:

• Achievement Mockery: There are rewards for failing to upgrade your toppings.

• Adaptational Gender Identity: When DJ Cookie was introduced in OvenBreak, their gender was unspecified. In Kingdom, they are explicitly referred to with they/them pronouns.
• Ad Reward: Starting in a late 2022 update, there are a handful of bonuses for watching ads:
  • Five times per day, you can knock 30 minutes off the remaining time on any timer.
  • Three times per day, you can receive a handful of Topping Pieces, Rainbow Cubes, and Crystals.
  • Once per day, you can get a second daily gift.
• After-Combat Recovery: Cookies always start a level with full HP, no matter how beat-up (or knocked-out) they might've been at the end of the previous level. The only exception is in the Tropical Soda Islands, where any player cookie that gets KO'd will need to spend some time (scaling with the level's difficulty) drying out in a sunbed (of which there are only five) before they can be used in battle again.
• After the End: The main story takes place a long time after the Final Battle between The Five and Dark Enchantress Cookie, which resulted in their disappearance. Without the heroes’ guidance, the ancient Cookie kingdoms crumbled and fell into ruin, and to rise another up is our objective in the game.
• All There in the Manual: Most of the information about the Five, ancient Cookie Kingdoms, and the worldbuilding are all in the Cookie Run: Kingdom official artbook.
• Ancient Egypt: The Golden Cheese Kingdom’s aesthetic, down to their architecture and ruling system.
• Angelic Abomination: The Avatar of Destiny, a Guild Battle boss released in 2022, is a winged, haloed thing that summons pillars of light to attack your cookies.
• Another Side, Another Story:
  • Dark Mode lets you play through more difficult versions of previously completed episodes. While netting additional rewards, players look into the perspective of Pomegranate Cookie's group. Said mode also requires that you get all stars from the main story's episodes to progress.
  • Master Mode adds a third, much harder tier of difficult replays, requiring all stars in the corresponding Dark Mode episodes and focusing on the investigations of Clotted Cream Cookie and Financier Cookie. Master episodes allow farming Soulcores for Ascension, which are otherwise somewhere between "unreliable" and "pure luck" to acquire.
• Anthropomorphic Food: Hey, it’s Cookie Run after all. Here, aside from the humanoid Cookies we are all familiar with, we also have the living Bear Jellies and the Sugar Gnomes.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The Bear Jelly Trains, which are the only item-request feature that can never be reset if you don't like what they're asking for, won't request a newly-unlocked item until you've crafted at least 10 of them. Before this feature was added, it was easy to lock the trains up indefinitely by building higher-level upgrades too early and getting requests for items you technically had the ability to make but couldn't actually pull it off.
• Arc Number: In the leadup to the BTS x Cookie Run Kingdom crossover, 7 becomes prominent. The game will have 7 purple balloons flying off, the schedule will have 7 sets of teasers in preparation for the event and of course, all 7 boys will be in the game.
• Art Shift: During World 17, GingerBrave, Wizard Cookie, and Black Raisin Cookie somehow enter a virtual space and their avatars become pixellated.
• Ascended Meme: One of the loading screen tips mentions that Angel Cookie is known for "the stare," referencing their hilariously Off-Model stare from during the Detective events in the main game. They can even be seen doing it sometimes as one of their idle animations in the town!
• Backstory Horror: Three words, Dark Flour War. Dear god, the burnt flour being Cookies’ corpses crushed into dust... Then there’s the fall of the kingdoms after their rulers’ disappearance - presumably dead, and are now empty ruins plagued with hordes of monsters. Strawberry Cookie also mentioned seeing another sentient gingerbread man get eaten while she was escaping the Witch’s house.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic:
  • The standard and featured cookie gachas guarantee one cookie (10% Epic, 90% Rare) every 10 draws, and one Epic cookie every 100 draws.
  • The Nether Gacha (for Ancients and Legendaries) hands out the banner Cookie for free after 250 draws.
  • While Super Epic cookie gachas do contain the actual featured cookie, they also contain a set of special items that can be traded in for them, one of which is guaranteed every so many draws.^note The exact numbers have been slightly different every time, but they always work out to getting the cookie within 200 draws or fewer.
  • The Disney event gacha guaranteed a cookie every 20 draws.
  • The BTS event gacha guarantees a cookie every 50 draws.
• Battle of the Bands: The "Braver Together" event focuses on B.A.D 4 (Schwarzwalder, Red Velvet, Licorice and Poison Mushroom) wanting to rule the world by upstaging BTS when they're having a concert.
• Beef Gate: In the second half of the Red Dragon Hunt event, the titular dragon is fought deceptively early in the act, and he is far stronger than anything you've faced beforehand with a plethora of hard hitting, relentless attacks, requiring a specially prepared team with specific Toppings and Treasures if you want to have any hope of beating it.
• Bland-Name Product: Bassist Cookie mentions that Black Lemonade Cookie stalks Shining Glitter on Coogle.
• Bowdlerise: Not applied to the base game released worldwide, but the Chinese version that goes through this and gets approved there. Some cookie's appearances have been changed, like the buttons on Gingerbrave's body are now round instead of skull-shaped, and Licorice Cookie's summons don't look like skulls at all.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The effect of Licorice Cookie's punch in World 12, with GingerBrave having to fight off a brainwashed Wizard Cookie and Strawberry Cookie and later Raspberry Cookie.
• Cartoon Meat: Stamina Jellies may not actually be meat, but their design of a delicious red blob with a Stock Femur Bone sticking out both ends is clearly intended to be evocative of meat on the bone.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: Per Cookie Run tradition, events can go from silly and light-hearted to dark and foreboding and then back to laughter and sunshine. For example, the grim Duskgloom Sea story which details how Captain Caviar fought against Black Pearl Cookie is immediately segued to...GingerBrave attending a BTS concert.
• Character Class System: While every Cookie has their own unique skill and stats, they're organized into distinct classes, which serve as a broad description of what they do in battle (and determine what kind of powder you need to level up their skill). These include:
  • Charge characters for damage-focused or all-round frontline fighters.
  • Defense characters for more defense-oriented frontline fighters.
  • Ambush characters, who deal heavy damage and specialize in attacking the enemy's back row.
  • Bombers, who focus on powerful attacks that often deal area-of-effect damage.
  • Ranged characters, single-target attackers stationed in the rear.
  • Healers, who are usually in the rear, and Support characters, who can be in the rear or in the middle — both of these focus on healing and buffing their allies.
  • Magic characters, who are mostly notable for their skill rather than their stats — usually an area-of-effect attack that hits multiple times, or something that allows them to summon minions.
• Competitive Balance:
  • You can only have up to three Ancient or Legendary rarity cookies at a time in the Arena.
  • You can only put one Cookie with the Safeguarded ability in your party.
• Cooldown: As per the RPG element, each Cookie has a fixed waiting time before they can use their skill again. Wise usage of time is the key to victory. There are also toppings and treasures that can be used to help reduce the cooldown as well, while some Cookies have abilities that quicken their cooldowns.
• Crossover:
  • In mid-September 2021, Kingdom crossed over with Sonic the Hedgehog having a Sonic and Tails Cookie as playable characters.
  • In late-July 2022, the game crosses over with several Disney properties; having Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, Alice, Lilo, Stitch, Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Aladdin, Jasmine, Belle, the Beast, Cinderella, Mulan, Pocahontas, Aurora, Snow White, and Ariel Cookies show up in the kingdom.
  • On September 21st, 2022, Devsisters announced another crossover with BTS for the "Braver Together" event in October, in which cookies based on all seven members will be in the game.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Unlike the main franchise, which has an Excuse Plot most of the time, the plot of Kingdom is significantly more complex and include heavier subjects in every corner possible. By heavier, we mean a literal war, the collapse of an entire Cookie civilization following their leaders’ assuming death, and a literal Cookie holocaust with the Dark Flour War in the backstory that is promptly never mentioned again. So does the appropriately-named Dark Mode compared to the main plotline, particularly since it focuses on how Dark Choco Cookie fell from grace.
  • And then there's the Tower of Chaos, in which Pastry Cookie gets to see traumatized cookies with empty smiles on their faces (which is the image for the game's Nightmare Fuel page).
  • Related to the Tower of Chaos above, the original lore of the game, that the living cookies were made by a witch who deliberately brought them to life while intending to eat them, is heavily expanded upon and examined in a more serious light than it was in previous games. Now there's an entire coven of witches instead of just one and the original cookie inhabitants of Earthbread escaped from them 1000s of years ago, only for this knowledge to be forgotten due to a religion springing up around those witches worshipping them like gods while hiding from ordinary citizens the reason why the witches created them. A devote follower of this faith learning the Awful Truth is the Start of Darkness of the game's main antagonist. Pastry Cookie learns most of this during her trip to the Tower, which greatly shakes her faith too.
  • The Frost Queen and the Lantern in the Snow is one of the darkest Christmas events Devsisters has written and the events end on a more bittersweet note.
• Embarrassing First Name: The Choco Werehound Brute's real name is Schwarzwälder^note The German name for the Black Forest gateau!. He gets embarrassed when Licorice Cookie calls him by it.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Living Abyss, first released in early 2022 as the boss of Episode 13, then ascended to a Guild Battle boss a few months later, is a terrifying blobby thing made of licorice-dark goo which first crawled out of the Licorice Sea and will attempt to devour your cookies when you fight it.
• Fairytale Motif: The Frost Queen Cookie storyline is similar to the classic Snow Queen fairy tale.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • Similar to Ovenbreak, the animation that plays when you use the gacha is affected by what you're going to get. If only Gingerbrave opens the oven door and the witch doesn’t return to look at you, don’t have your hope high — you’ll get Soulstones. On the other hand, if Gingerbrave, Clover Cookie and Custard Cookie III open the door and the witch looks at you with laughably cutesy eyes, go open a bottle because an Epic is coming.
  • The costume animation gacha depends on what costumes are on display in Macaron Cookie's shop. If you have Cheesecake and Sparkling Cookie's epic costumes on display, then celebrate cause you're getting something good.
• For Want of a Nail: Highlighted in Lord Oyster's bio in "A Mermaid's Tale". If he refused Abalone Cookie's offer, then Black Pearl Cookie would never have been born because he wouldn't have sold her pearl for House Oyster's fortune.
  "When House Abalone offered their hand, Lord Oyster couldn't help but feel uneasy to take it. If he refused, this story may have had a different ending."
• Gameplay Automation:
  • In combat, there's an "Auto" option, which automatically uses skills and treasures as soon as their cooldowns expire.
  • In the kingdom, a line of special shop-exclusive buildings will automatically produce bundles of basic materials every several hours. Roll Cake Wood, Jellybeans, Sugar Cubes, Biscuit Flour, Jellyberries — any item produced directly from Coins has a corresponding building.
• Grim Up North: Dark Cacao Kingdom, which was founded on the edge of the Giant Icing Ridge, a land of perpetual snowfall which beckons a life of austerity and perseverance. The climate was very harsh and lands were stalked by dire beasts of all kinds, causing their Cookies to live a life of combat and constant reminder of perils and death.
• Guide Dang It!: Three examples from the Holiday Cake Shop minigame:
  • An unusual example: some characters, such as Snow Sugar Cookie, Poison Mushroom Cookie, and Raspberry Cookie, give you the option to ask for further clarification on their cake orders, since their prompts are pretty vague. Doing this will get you a lower rating. That's right: if you wanted to get a perfect score on the first try without a guide, you'd have to guess based on their prompts alone. However, you can reinvite them if you don't get five hearts on the first try and make another cake.
  • Sometimes, a character will request "at least" a certain number of layers on their cake. Despite this, you have to give them exactly that number. No more, no fewer.
  • Figuring out the cake orders of nonverbal characters can be tricky. For example, you have to infer Candy Diver Cookie's request based on the unicode symbols in their dialogue.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted for beginning Cookies that consists of three males (four; counting pre-registered players who got Clover Cookie) and two females. The female Cookies are involved in direct combat while other male Cookies either shoot magic against enemies or heal their teammates (only one male Cookie is involved in direct combat, GingerBrave himself.) In the game itself, most of the Charge Cookies are male^note Out of 19 Charge Cookies, five are female, two are ambiguous, and the rest are male while all but one of the Ranged Cookies are female.^note The sole male for the Ranged Cookies is Sherbet Cookie
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The fight against Dark Enchantress Cookie and the Cake Witch at the end of Map 8. "Victory" advances the story, but does nothing to stop Dark Enchantress's plans.
• Healing Boss: Season 10 of Cookie Alliance contained a Tainted Ent as a boss fight, which had a nasty habit of recovering all its HP in a few seconds if it wasn't dealt with effectively. While there were a few ways, the only really reliable method was to use Pumpkin Pie Cookie.
• Hidden Purpose Test: The test to deem those worthy to access the lost Vanilla Kingdom is revealed to be a farce in hopes of preventing anyone from restoring it, as doing so is said to bring back Dark Enchantress Cookie.
• Humanity Ensues: Parodied in the "Shroomie Shenanigans!" event from April Fool's Day 2022. Funny rainbow mushrooms given to the cookies to eat give a "joke filter" design for them. A majority of them turn into Animesque humans.
• Is It Something You Eat?: Random chatter with Crunchy Chip Cookie can have him ask about "Delega-tion?" and wondering if it's something to eat.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In World 8, one of the obstacles blocking the path is the Strange Flask, a large flask of spilling pink liquid next to some yellow jellybeans. When interacting with the flask Custard Cookie III worries that touching it would transform them into Jelly-eyed mindless monsters◊, referencing the Jelly Walkers, the main antagonists of Cookie Wars.
  • One of Twizzly Gummy Cookie's companions is Wild Strawberry Cookie, an alternate timeline/dimension version of Strawberry Cookie; Wild Strawberry Cookie's design is taken heavily from a Cookie Wars character of the same name, a Mythic variant of Strawberry Cookie from.
• Improbably Female Cast: Surprisingly for a gacha game, averted. There are thirty-four male cookies to thirty-two female ones, meaning the males slightly outnumber the females.
• Item Crafting: A massive part of the game. You create everything from food to tools, except the buildings - the Sugar Gnomes will help you with that. Tools are also essential to progress the story map.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When White Lily Cookie seems to be trapped within a moonstone, Gingerbrave smashes it to bits...only to unseal Dark Enchantress Cookie in the process.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Cookies defeated in battle, both player and enemy, will be flung offscreen, removed from the battle without appearing to suffer any actual harm from it.
• Not Completely Useless:
  • Common cookies are typically totally outclassed once you've pulled some Rares and Epics to replace them, and Rares in turn are useless once you've gotten more Epics. However, two of the Black Pearl Islands altar blessings provides a boost of 800+% to the stats of Common cookies or 300+% to Rares, boosting Commons to the most powerful cookies available and making Rares second only to boosted Commons.
  • GingerBrave, despite being a Common cookie and thus quickly outclassed, is a key part of the appropriately-named "GingerScam" Arena team build, as his skill's knockback can get the opposing team grouped together for a burst of heavy damage from the other four cookies. While it's possible to pull off the same strategy with Kumiho Cookie instead, it's much trickier.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: There are ten types of toppings that each boost a different stat, but nearly every cookie wants either ATK (Raspberry), Cooldown (Chocolate), or DMG Resist (Almond). Tanks want the almonds, and everyone else wants either the raspberries or the chocolates depending on how their skill works. Cookies with unusual skills that run off a different stat have been added, but they all still want one very specific stat, just not one of the three most common. * Painting the Medium: In World 17, the speech bubbles for the citizens of the Golden Cheese Kingdom are patterned differently than normal speech bubbles, which is something GingerBrave notes. It's not just for show, it's to highlight how the kingdom is a virtual world.
• Play Every Day: Daily log-in bonuses are commonly granted. The player also needs to maintain their abode manually and keep their production houses running so that their kingdom would develop efficiently.
• Power Equals Rarity:
  • Zigzagged for cookies: Common cookies are okay enough to get you through the early chapters of Story Mode, but Rare cookies usually completely outclass them, and Epic cookies in turn usually completely outclass Rares. It gets a little more complicated after that; Super Epic, Dragon, Legendary, and Ancient cookies are indeed very good, but there's also only a handful of them and most newly-released cookies are Epic, so it's quite common for the best cookie in a particular role not to be one of the highest rarities. There are also a handful of overly-specific situations where a Common or Rare cookie is really useful.
  • Completely averted for treasures — almost every treasure has its niche, and which ones are good seems to be completely orthogonal to its rarity. The Old Pilgrim's Scroll (boosts attack) is one of the best, and it's Epic, but the Squishy Jelly Watch (reduces cooldowns) and the Gatekeeper Ghost's Horn (boosts defense) are generally considered to be in the same league, and they're Common.
• Putting the Band Back Together: After the Flour War, the five went their separate ways with their piece of Soul Jam. Most of the main story revolves around getting them back together for the war against Dark Enchantress Cookie (AKA: White Lily Cookie).
• Precious Puppy: The Cake Hounds act like adorable puppies to the point that Red Velvet Cookie has one as a pet and names him Chiffon.
• Recurring Element: Super Epic Cookies are categorized as either having elemental powers (Stardust, Sherbet, Capsaicin) or alluded to be rich (Clotted Cream, Oyster, Shining Glitter).
• Recursive Acronym: For the BTS crossover event, the Cookies of Darkness form a competing evil band called "B.A.D. 4", in which "B.A.D." stands for "Bad And Dark".
• Replay Mode: Early into the game, Wizard Cookie will request the rebuilding of a tower close to the kingdom so he can store archives; the tower acts a cutscene viewer, and contains all cutscenes the player has unlocked.
• Rhythm Game: The October 2022 BTS event "Braver Together" and July 2023 "Summer Soda Rock Fest" event have rhythm games based on cookies running to gather notes and jellies a la OvenBreak and a rhythm game where you tape or drag parts of the screen in time with the music.
• Riddle of the Sphinx: A sphinx is found in World 17 who asks them the traditional riddle. In a unique subversion, the answer is not a human because none of the cookies know what a human is.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of Latte Cookie's lines go like this "Turn to page 394. Oh, did we already cover this?".
  • In one boat when you clear our a clouded region, you will be treated with a cutscene of "Coco Jack" holding the Durianian's arms in front of the boat soaring their arms, stating that they're "flying... Coco Jack!".◊ Now, where have we seen that one before?
  • One of the underwater stages A Mermaid's Tale features a yellow sponge lying next to a pink sea star with green seaweed covering two of its limbs as if they were pants. Makes one wonder if the Tearcrown kingdom has a Krusty Krab somewhere within its depths.
• Simulation Game: Half of the game consists of developing a new kingdom. This requires to set up new buildings and gather ingredients and tools for them.
• Skill Gate Characters: Most Common Rank units are qualified as this, since their skill sets gives novice players the baseline understanding as to what their classes are like and they're easily obtainable from the gacha (meaning they can get promoted up to 5 stars very easily). They fall off very quickly in the early-game, though, since they don't provide any useful status buffs nor debuffs to help the team, and are easily benched when players starts getting better ranked Cookies.
• Starter Mon: Of both introducing Ranks and Roles each starter units play as.
  • Gingerbrave, Strawberry Cookie, and Wizard Cookie are the first three Common units players get for free, as well as introducing their roles of Charge, Defense, and Magic respectively.
  • Chili Pepper Cookie is the first Epic Cookie to get for free in a gacha tutorial (in-turn, introducing how gacha mechanics work in-game), along with introducing the Ambush role to the players.
  • Custard Cookie III and Clover Cookie^note If players pre-registered for the game are free Rare units that introduces Support Party Member in a form of Healing and Support roles respectively.
• Suddenly Voiced: Cookies gain voiced lines in the game (though initially only in Korean, a Japanese and English voice pack was released September 2nd, 2021 and October 8th in the same year, as well with Thai, Taiwanese, German and French released in May 3rd, 2022 respectively).
• Sugar Apocalypse: The Dark Flour War that almost destroyed the whole Cookie civilization had the Five Heroes not risen. Following the Five’s disappearance, their subjects could not handle the overwhelming Darkness and the aforementioned civilization collapsed.
• Squishy Wizard: Most of the Magic Class units are qualified as this (some of them being Glass Cannon) since they are main damage dealers of the team but needed front line units to defend them against enemies that can easily take them out. Other mid-lane units, such as Bombs and Ambush, also qualify but without pure magic at their disposal.
• A Taste of Power: The game's tutorial opens up with you playing as The Five, who are extremely powerful. Then you get to play with Gingerbrave and friends, who have three Common cookies on the team.
• Two Girls to a Team: Strawberry Cookie and Chili Pepper Cookie are the only two female Cookies in Gingerbrave's main group. Inverted with the five legendary hero Cookies, where Pure Vanilla Cookie and Dark Cacao Cookie are the only males in the group.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can make Herb Cookie chop down trees (which gives him a sad expression) or Red Velvet Cookie fight his Cake Hounds. And thanks to Gameplay and Story Segregation, production values or stats won't be affected.
• Villains Out Shopping: The existence of B.A.D 4 as a representative of the Cookies of Darkness appears to have shades of this, with Licorice, Red Velvet, Poison Mushroom, and Choco Werehound Brute are competing for first place in the music competition business. While a bit problematic, this plan is considered by many to be outright timid compared to the tactics Dark Enchantress Cookie is willing to pull.
• War Is Hell: Those who came out from the Dark Flour War carry visible mental and emotional burdens on their shoulders, showing that PTSD is no joke. Not even the saintly Pure Vanilla Cookie and jolly Hollyberry Cookie - two of the ancient heroes and great monarchs - are immune from the feeling of guilt and being a "failure". It got so bad that Pure Vanilla had a mental breakdown while trying to face his past, and Hollyberry left everything behind to go into hiding, believing she didn’t deserve either the throne or the sacred shield anymore.
• Weird Crossover:
  • September 2021 had Cookie Run Kingdom crossover with Sonic the Hedgehog, with the only thing in common was that they liked to run a lot.
  • October 2022 is when Cookie Run Kingdom had a crossover...with BTS. Yes, the number one Korean boy band crossed over as adorable cookies.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The anniversary events act like epilogues to the storylines that happened throughout the year.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The second half of World 17 is essentially a Cookie version of the Black Mirror episode "San Junipero", which involves souls being uploaded into a virtual reality where there's nothing but partying all day and night.
• Wizarding School: The Parfaedia Institute that comes in the same update with Guild feature is the heart of Dessert Magic — a field of magic in Cookie Run: Kingdom’s world. Cream Puff Cookie studied there, it’s also where Latte Cookie, Espresso Cookie and Eclair Cookie teach.
• Writing Around Trademarks: The second year anniversary sidestories never directly mention either the Disney or BTS cookies when recapping their respective storylines.
• Wutai: The Dark Cacao Kingdom. It is based on ancient Korea.
• You Didn't Ask: When Custard Cookie III mentions that he's a descendant of the Vanilla, Chili Pepper Cookie demands to know why he didn't mention that earlier. His flustered response is to point out that nobody ever asked.

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