Tinybuild has announced Road Redemption developer Redemption Road Games’ Kingmakers, which takes medieval battle simulation and perverts it with modern firepower. I can dig it.
The trailer’s pretty awesome, misdirecting with some shots of gameplay that could be torn out of any number of medieval RTS. Then, it cuts to someone driving a pickup truck through the battle, and it gets weirder from there.
You play as someone from the future who gets sent back in time to intervene in a war. You’re trying to prevent the apocalypse and simultaneously confuse archeologists by leaving bullet casings on battlefields. But beyond just enjoying a vast technological advantage, you also get to lead your troops, popping out of third-person combat to an overhead RTS viewpoint. You also plop down buildings, but judging by the guys running around during this sequence in the trailer, it looks more like Command & Conquer basebuilding than metagame citybuilding.
Blasting knights with modern firepower isn’t really anything new, but somehow, it isn’t very pervasive (yet). It’s an appealing concept. It was always very satisfying in the Civilization series to have a vast technological superiority and roll tanks over their archers.
Kingmakers also features co-op for anyone who has friends. It can be played with four people, each commanding their own army. I have to wonder what a co-op campaign would look like for the game.
For that matter, I’m curious about the single-player campaign. The trailer shows the player jumping back and forth between the medieval setting and the future. The footage focuses more on the core gameplay without really revealing what will tie it together. However, I really enjoyed Road Redemption and appreciate the developer’s approach, so I’m totally on board.
Kingmakers is planned to launch into Steam Early Access sometime in 2024.
