Kingmakers

Overview

Kingmakers is a third-person shooter and real-time strategy game developed by Redemption Road Games and published by tinyBuild. The game puts players in the role of a time-traveling soldier sent 500 years into the past to 1400 AD medieval England, armed with modern weaponry and tasked with commanding thousands of medieval units across large-scale battlefields. At its core, Kingmakers blends two genres that rarely overlap: the on-the-ground gunplay of a third-person shooter with the overhead command structure of a real-time strategy title.

The game has generated significant anticipation since its announcement, accumulating over one million wishlists on Steam and reaching the number seven spot on the platform's most-wishlisted list. It is being built on Unreal Engine 4.27, a deliberate choice by the development team to optimize the game's physics processing and handle the computational demands of rendering thousands of soldiers, destructible environments, and vehicles all at once.

Key Details

Concept and Premise

The central premise of Kingmakers is built around time travel. An elite task force is sent 500 years back in time to the year 1400 AD, landing in the middle of the Welsh Rebellion led by Owain Glyndwr. In the original, unaltered timeline, Glyndwr's rebellion succeeded and unified Britain under Welsh leadership, eventually producing a technologically advanced civilization. A mysterious and malevolent force changed the outcome of this rebellion, causing Wales to fail and setting history on a different, weaker trajectory. Players must fight to restore the original timeline and undo the damage.

This premise gives the developers a believable excuse to throw assault rifles, tanks, and attack helicopters into a medieval battlefield. The player is not just a soldier, though. They are a commander. At any point during gameplay, players can pull the camera up into an overhead strategy mode to issue orders to their armies, then drop back down to the ground to fight alongside their troops in third-person. This seamless switching between the two modes is the game's signature mechanic and the feature that sets it apart from other titles in either genre.

Gameplay

Kingmakers splits its gameplay into two tightly integrated modes. In the shooter mode, players control their character directly from a third-person perspective, using a wide range of modern weapons against medieval opponents. Assault rifles, sniper rifles, SMGs, shotguns, pistols, grenade launchers, RPGs, and more are all available. Every weapon in the game has a penetration rating that interacts with different material types (plaster, wood, and stone), so a round that punches through a wooden wall may be stopped by the stone interior of a castle keep.

In strategy mode, the camera rises to an overhead view and the game becomes a real-time strategy experience. Players command up to roughly 4,000 NPC soldiers on the battlefield at once, with the development team noting the engine can be pushed toward 8,000 under the right conditions. Six distinct medieval unit types are available at Early Access launch: Swordsmen, Spearmen, Cavalry, Archers, Berserkers, and Men-at-Arms. Each follows a rock-paper-scissors balance system and can be upgraded through multiple tiers.

Beyond the battlefield, players engage in kingdom building. Resources like copper, gold, and hidden treasures can be gathered and sent forward to the future as currency for unlocking upgrades and new equipment. Settlements must be constructed, economies managed, and production facilities built to sustain the war effort. Peasant levies can be upgraded into proper soldiers as they gain experience, and officers earn individual XP that makes them more effective over time.

Co-Op and Multiplayer

Kingmakers supports up to four players in online co-op multiplayer with a drop-in, drop-out system. Each player controls their own buildings, armies, and territory. The full campaign can be completed either solo or cooperatively. There is no local or split-screen multiplayer. PvP is not planned for the Early Access period, though it remains a possibility for the future. Crossplay between platforms is planned for after the initial launch. An offline solo mode is also available for players who prefer to play without an internet connection.

Vehicles and Air Support

The game features several drivable vehicles at Early Access launch, including a motorcycle, a convertible car with 360-degree shooting capability, and a tank. Air support comes in the form of an AH-64 Apache helicopter equipped with an M230 Chain Gun and F-16 airplane airstrikes that have been compared to the airstrike mechanics from Helldivers 2. Armored SUVs and a Humvee mounted with an M2HB heavy machine gun also appear in the game. Vehicles can crash directly through destructible buildings, adding another layer of chaos to already hectic battles. Pilotable helicopters and planes are planned for post-Early Access updates.

Technology

Redemption Road Games built Kingmakers on Unreal Engine 4.27 rather than UE5. The team has explained that UE4.27 handles the physics processing required for thousands of simultaneous NPC animations and destructible environments more efficiently for their specific needs. The game is written entirely in C++ and HLSL. To render thousands of soldiers without destroying frame rates, the team developed a custom GPU shader-based animation system: the CPU sees every NPC in a T-pose, while the GPU handles all the actual animation work. Distant soldiers use vertex animations for performance, switching to full skeletal animation when the camera gets close enough to see the detail. This system is what allows the game to field such large armies while still targeting 60 frames per second on mid-range hardware. DLSS is supported.

Development History

The game has been in development for over five years. Redemption Road Games was founded by brothers Ian Fisch (Lead Coder) and Paul Fisch (Game Director), who previously created Road Redemption, a spiritual successor to the classic Road Rash racing series. The studio has offices in Atlanta and Los Angeles and employs roughly 20 developers. Kingmakers was originally scheduled to enter Early Access on October 8, 2025, but the date was delayed indefinitely. The current target is sometime in 2026.

Film Adaptation

A film adaptation of Kingmakers is in development at Netflix. The screenplay is being written by Christopher MacBride, with Shawn Levy and his production company 21 Laps (represented by Dan Levine) attached as producers. Story Kitchen, the company that brokered the deal, connected the studio with the Netflix team. The adaptation was announced well before the game's release, a sign of how much attention the concept has attracted outside the gaming industry.

Design Inspirations

The developers have cited a wide range of influences across multiple genres. On the strategy side, games like Mount and Blade, Crusader Kings, Stronghold, and Total War shaped the army command and kingdom management systems. The cooperative multiplayer was influenced by Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide, Valheim, and Rust. The medieval combat and setting draw from Chivalry and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The overall tone, which blends absurdist humor with genuine strategic depth, has been likened to the 1992 film Army of Darkness.

Early Access Roadmap

The post-Early Access roadmap includes the addition of Scottish and French factions, PvP multiplayer modes, pilotable helicopters and planes, flamethrowers, combat drones, AI improvements through machine learning, and Steam Workshop support for community mods. The scope of the roadmap suggests the developers intend for Early Access to last a substantial period as these features are added incrementally.