It’s been a while since we had an update on genre-bending, time-warping, insane-looking shooter Kingmakers. At the tinyBuild Connect on the 14th of September developers Redemption Road treated us to a gameplay deep dive going over exactly what players can actually do in the game, how they progress, and how it all manages to function at all with 10,000 soldiers in any given battle. There’s still no release date, but the project looks substantially more complete than our last look at the game.
In a nutshell, Kingmakers is a game about a man equipped with modern technology and weaponry who becomes embroiled in Wales’ rebellion against the pathetic English in the 1400s. What that actually looks like in terms of gameplay and progression has been somewhat in-the-air, but this deep dive gives us a great insight into what we can expect to be doing in the rebellion…
Kingmakers is an RTS and TPS hybrid now
The first key detail shown at the tinyBuild Connect deep dive is that Kingmakers won’t just have the third-person shooter gameplay teased previously. With so many soldiers in a battle and huge 1:1 scale battlefields, sieges and villages the team decided they needed a tactical camera option, a “strategy mode”. In real-time, you can go from blasting rockets out of your ATV to commanding your medieval era troops in a birdseye view, then snap right back to the ground to carry on your personal assault.
We’ve seen RTS and FPS hybrids before, but never quite on this scale and with this level of simulation. The trailer shows something important: The RTS mechanics in Kingmakers aren’t limited to battlefield commands, they extend across the whole campaign.
Kingmakers features town-building and city management seamlessly
When you’re taking villages and castles back you’re then able to build and expand on that land. You’ll be managing peasants, resources and morale from towns as well as from the frontline. This Mount & Blade style approach adds a level of depth that was unexpected in a deep dive for a game about blowing up knights with RPGs.
Every building you place in the top-down build mode is fully rendered, habitable and destructible when in third-person which frankly sounds both ridiculous and unprecedented. If they can pull it off, then the details shown in this deep dive will add up to be a truly monumental game.
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Kingmakers is playable in drop-in drop-out co-op for up to 4 players
The deep dive touched on some details on how co-op in Kingmakers works. For one, players will have their own armies in co-op. This prevents you from fighting over ordering troops and lets you choose how independent each player’s force is. Co-op was also confirmed to be “drop-in, drop-out” for the entire campaign. This means co-op isn’t being added on as a bonus game mode or strictly for one-off skirmishes, but seamlessly integrated into the whole campaign.
Progression and missions in Kingmakers revealed
The deep dive also confirmed some details over progression and mission structure. Your overall goal is to aid the rebellion, and so key missions might be given such as escorting nobles through your lands, taking a new castle in a siege, or building a stable food supply for a village to convert them via morale. Achieving these goals is one thing, but the progression of how you achieve them is another.
As you play you will collect resources both for the past and the future. By sending resources to the future, you can have new modern-day amenities sent back to you. This means you’re able to try out new weapons and vehicles, but also create ever-more anachronistic spectacles such as calling an airstrike onto enemy cavalry. Charge of the light brigade, indeed.
Because these systems are based on your current resources and rebellion size, as well as what you physically have on you at the time of an encounter, gameplay could vary between boots-on-the-ground incremental progress through a castle choke point to simply removing the entire castle door with a few satchel charges. These elements promise to give us some truly emergent gameplay, reminiscent of tackling outposts in Farcry or Just Cause.
No release date, but playtests are live
Kingmakers is still being worked on and isn’t in early access, with no release date in sight. However, you can request access to the playtest on Steam. I had my doubts about this idea being able to be actualised, but the dev choosing to stick to Unreal Engine 4 combined with the deep dive today give me a glimmer of hope that Kingmakers could actualise its potential.
