New medieval game goes viral for massive battles with “insane” twists

Ethan Dean
KingMakers Key Art

The first look at KingMakers has garnered major attention thanks to the sheer scale of its medieval combat, and the unique curveball it throws at the genre.

2024 has already been such an interesting year for games with surprise hits seemingly hiding around every corner. The unexpected success of sleepers like Palworld and Helldivers 2 is paving the way for smaller titles to blow up.

Palworld’s high-concept Pokemon with guns pitch captured the imagination of millions of players and rocketed it through the Steam charts. Helldivers 2 has had similar success thanks to its in-built hilarity and unifying gameplay.

It’s probably a little too early to call but judging from an incredible first-look trailer, Redemption Road Games’ KingMakers seems destined for similar success. The trailer is doing some numbers on Twitter and is catching the eye of major publishers and content creators.

KingMakers needs to be seen to be believed

At first glance, KingMaker looks like your classic medieval RTS game. Right up until a time-traveling pickup truck plows through a fyrd and mows down the lightly armored peasant conscripts.

Going from strength to strength, the trailer shows off gameplay in which the player character takes on hordes of 15th-century soldiers with assault rifles, grenade launchers, and finally, an attack helicopter. We don’t think we need to explain why people are so excited.

The KingMaker trailer shows off a bunch of impressive gameplay systems including the building of settlements, RTS battle command, and an overwhelming number of enemy combatants. The sheer scale of the combat shown off did have some viewers concerned though devs were quick to put those fears to rest.

“We’re obsessed with optimization,” they said. “We already have it running on Steamdeck. As you can imagine, the code is ridiculously optimized.”

KingMaker's Assault Rifle Gameplay

The primary purpose of the trailer is to petition potential players to wishlist KingMaker on Steam. It’s not just PC players who will get to experience the chaotic time-traveling action though.

The game’s developers have confirmed in response to our question that it will be coming to consoles with full four-player support.