Highlights
- A new trailer for the upcoming indie game Kingmakers has broken the internet after revealing its first trailer.
- Fans have responded to the trailer with excitement, with many calling it a day-one purchase.
- On Steam later this year, Kingmakers lets you build a kingdom, lead armies into battle, and navigate intricate castles with an army of NPC soldiers.
Just when you think video games have done it all, a tiny indie studio comes out of nowhere with one of the most wacky, off-the-wall trailers you’ll ever see.
Kingmakers, an upcoming third-person shooter with a twist, will have you adding it to your Steam wishlist around the 23-second mark when the trailer takes an absolute u-turn and reveals its true colors. While the opening gameplay shots appear to be a simple, Chivalry-style battle game, along with some building elements, the trailer takes a turn when a pickup truck appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and mows down an entire army.
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Yep, you guessed it (you didn’t), Kingmakers takes players back in time to the 15th century with a vast arsenal of weapons to change the course of history. Alongside the ability to build your very own kingdom, Kingmakers will let you lead an army in real-time simulated battles – on your own or with a friend.
While the concept is certainly unique, developer Redemption Road Games says one of their many inspirations was the Kingdom Under Fire series by Blueside and Phantagram. And for the history buffs out there, Kingmakers “goes deep into 15th century medieval lore (Henry V, Charles VI, etc),” according to Redemption Road Games. There just happens to be some guys roaming around from the future with grenade launchers and AK-47s…the usual stuff!
If, like me, you’re thinking to yourself, “That’s an awful lot of NPC soldiers on the battlefield,” Redemption Road Games says that it took a heck of a lot of CPU and GPU optimization.
“Everything in the trailer is 100% real. Every single soldier is running its own real AI and can navigate complicated multi-story castles. It took a LOT of CPU and GPU optimization,” Redemption Road Games said.
As you can imagine, the trailer sent the internet into a frenzy. With 5.7 million views and climbing on X, many of the responses were amazed at the game’s wild concept. “This is the most insane game I have ever seen. Please watch until 23 seconds,” one user said. While others were ready to throw their money at Redemption Road Games in the first 30 seconds of the trailer.
It’s not every day that you see a developer work so tirelessly on such a wacky concept. But with constant letdowns from supposed “quadruple-A games” and overhyped trailers that turn out to be complete scams, I’m hopeful that Kingmakers turns out to be exactly what it claims to be: an over-the-top video game that looks like ridiculous fun.
Kingmakers, sadly, doesn’t have a firm release date yet, but it’ll be coming to Steam sometime this year. The game’s official X account was also asked about a console release, to which they responded by saying, “Yep. We already have it running on Steamdeck and console APUs.”
Whenever the time, whatever the platform, count me in.
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