Kingmakers delayed indefinitely as developer needs “more time before we feel good about charging money for it”

Redemption Road’s time-travelling bring-an-assault-rifle-to-a-medieval-sword-fight shooter and strategy game, Kingmakers, has been indefinitely delayed.

Redemption stated it pushed the release to ensure it does not “cut any planned features for the sake of getting it out of the door earlier” and apologised for “letting [players] down”.

“After much contemplation, we realise that the scheduled Kingmakers launch on October 8 will no longer be possible. We want to apologise to all of the fans who are eagerly anticipating this game. We are sorry for letting you down,” the studio said in a statement posted to social media.

“Why is Kingmakers being delayed? In short, it’s an incredibly ambitious, uncompromising game, and we don’t want to cut any planned features, for the sake of getting it out the door earlier. Our goal, from the start, has been to create something that’s nothing like anything else on the market, in terms of gameplay, scale, scope, and interactivity.”

The statement goes on to say that Redemption Road “pushed the Unreal Engine 4 codebase to its absolute limits”, while still providing “true 60fps to mid-range PCs, without the need for fake frames”.

“We are an 80% engineering team, who got into this business to push technological barriers,” the team added, before describing how the game has “tens of thousands of soldiers” each with AI and pathfinding that “rivals what you’d expect from a AAA person shooter” and how players can enter every room in its six-story castles.

“Every mission takes place in a giant, massive map that each player on the server is free to explore – with or without their own personal army of thousands,” Redemption added. “We set out to do all of this, with full drop-in/drop-out four-player multiplayer support, and we have. We just need a little bit more time on content polish before we feel good about charging money for it.”

The statement closed on promising that the studio would shortly present a half-hour-long deep dive on Kingmaker’s gameplay, “with a comprehensive overview of everything we’ve been working on”.

Donlan was certainly impressed when Kingsmakers memorable teaser dropped, writing: “Over the last decade or so, alongside the bigger, fewer bets publishers have made – which has also often led to formula, to conservatism – an onward march in graphical fidelity means that a certain kind of game has become obsessed with the details. I love details, and I love that games do this.”

Kingmakers may not be out yet, but it’s already secured a movie adaptation. The studio said it was “absolutely thrilled” that the unreleased game was “making its way to the big screen” in partnership with publisher tinyBuild and Story Kitchen.