Kingmakers shows signs of life with a few development videos, but I'm still a little concerned

I, like many others, was completely enamored with the pitch of Kingmakers. A time-travel escapade where one man is sent back to medieval times, and for reasons so far unknown, has to fight thousands of troops with the help of modern technology and, more importantly, modern weapons. Ambitious doesn’t cover it.

For all the world, it looked as though Kingmakers was going to scratch that open-world game, Army of Darkness itch I’ve had for decades, until the developer released a message that it was going to miss its early access release date. Since then, we’ve officially heard nothing. It’s been seven months since anyone has had word on Kingmakers, with the game still listed as ‘coming soon’ on Steam.

Recently, however, Game Director, Paul Fisch, shared a post on the Kingmakers discussion page on Steam – a “small update” – going into detail on some animations the team is working on, even going as far as sharing some videos on various parries and a wall-building system.

Additions like the ones shared by Fisch don’t appear to be the team’s primary focus at the moment, though. He writes: “the major work that’s ongoing however isn’t really in videos or pictures. It is balance work.” He talks about an endless wave horde mode that the team created to “improve game feel” and further improve the aforementioned balance issues. Presumably, that means it’s AI behaviour and weapons that are being tweaked, but who knows.

We still don’t have even a hint of a release date for Kingmakers, but I would have to assume that it wants to avoid that other open-world behemoth coming in November, as does literally every other game in existence. It’s nice to see that there is still work being done, though, as the silence was beginning to deafen. I was concerned we had another The Day Before situation on our hands, and nobody wants that, trust me.