Kingmakers' New Gameplay Breakdown Reveals a Massive Strategy Game Behind its Chaotic Modern Warfare

Kingmakers is shaping up to be more than a chaotic game about shooting medieval soldiers with modern weapons. Redemption Road Games has released its biggest gameplay breakdown yet, offering nearly 12 minutes of details about the strategy systems, progression, destruction, and large-scale battles that support its unusual premise. 

The new footage shows how you can combine real-time army management with third-person combat while also expanding your settlements and arsenal throughout the campaign. This combination gives you the freedom to plan large-scale battles from above before taking direct control when the fighting becomes more intense.

The game's central idea remains as unconventional as ever. 

You travel back to 1403 with modern weapons and technology to help Owain Glyndŵr and the Welsh Rebellion conquer England. According to the developers, the original timeline saw Glyndŵr's rebellion succeed, allowing Wales to conquer England and eventually leading humanity toward a more technologically advanced future. 

The gameplay breakdown shows characters discussing whether the killing is necessary and suggesting diplomacy, only for the conversation to turn toward Welsh history and the argument that conquering England might be required to prevent humanity's eventual destruction.

That tone matches the game's central appeal, but the new footage reveals that Kingmakers has considerably more depth beneath its modern-weapons-versus-medieval-armies concept. Redemption Road describes the project as its dream game and has spent years developing custom technology on top of Unreal Engine 4 to support its large-scale battles. 

You can switch to a strategic view during gameplay to issue orders, construct buildings, commission officers, and raise new groups of soldiers. 

The developers compare elements of this command interface to strategy games such as Age of Empires, Stronghold, and Manor Lords. As you capture territory, you establish settlements in hostile areas, where you must build farms and lumber mills, provide housing for peasants, and locate resources such as silver and iron.

Settlement development also comes with defensive responsibilities. As your territory expands, you need to improve walls and defenses because enemy armies can return and attempt to reclaim your holdings. This forces you to balance expansion with protection, making every new settlement a strategic responsibility rather than simply another place to occupy.

The buildings are designed at a realistic scale, with interiors that you can enter and explore, while the structures themselves are destructible. You can also construct barracks and gradually develop poorly trained peasants into specialized troops, including archers, cavalry, berserkers, and men-at-arms.

Walls, archer towers, ballistas, and trebuchets are your defenses, so you have several ways to prepare for incoming attacks. When you have thousands of enemy soldiers coming your way, you have to decide if your army can withstand the attack or if you should go into battle yourself with modern firepower. 

The transition between these systems is one of the most compelling aspects of Kingmakers. You might be managing an enormous medieval battlefield from the strategy view before jumping into third-person action, getting on a motorcycle, and driving toward an enemy formation that is breaking through your defenses. 

Co-op also scales up the experience, as each player commands his army in multiplayer sessions. 

A group of four players won’t just be running around together shooting knights, but each one will be able to manage separate forces in the larger battle. This could make teamwork more significant, particularly when players need to work together to coordinate troops, defend settlements, and respond to attacks over several areas.

Redemption Road says, for example, that missions can have tens of thousands of soldiers, and individual units can decide whether to attack, retreat, and fall back through systems involving morale and loyalty. The behavior of officers can also affect the battlefield. 

Taking down an important commander could affect the soldiers following them, potentially causing parts of an army to lose morale and retreat, while other troops might respond by attempting to avenge their fallen leader. The game's destruction systems are similarly ambitious. According to the developers, every tree and building can be destroyed, allowing the battlefield to change as armies, siege weapons, and modern vehicles move through it. 

One of the showcased enemies is a heavily armored officer capable of charging through their own soldiers and breaking through walls to reach you. The more battles you win, the more dangerous the officers get, some of whom use heavy armor and shields that provide better protection against lower-caliber weapons.

The developers have spoken about their approach to weapons and armor as well. 

Redemption Road has done live testing with weapons and armor, looking at how different types of ammo work against different types of armor. The studio wants to keep medieval plate armor useful against some weapons while preserving its realism. 

The future is reportedly short on resources, requiring you to collect copper, silver, gold, and treasures in the past before sending them forward through time. Your support team then uses these materials to provide better weapons and equipment. The arsenal expands into pistols, high-caliber handguns, assault rifles, AK-style rifles, light machine guns, sniper rifles, anti-materiel weapons, shotguns, submachine guns, miniguns, grenade launchers, stun weapons, and explosives. 

Later progression can introduce rocket turrets, landmines, air strikes, and futuristic technology such as plasma weapons. The developers are also keeping some weapons undisclosed so that players can discover them during the campaign, while upgrades can improve attributes such as magazine capacity, accuracy, and armor penetration.

Melee combat has received its own unusual treatment. 

Rather than giving players a sword and shield, the developers chose a massive sledgehammer because blunt force makes more sense against heavily armored opponents. You also carry a small buckler attached to your arm, which allows you to parry melee attacks and arrows while holding a firearm. 

Vehicles will also develop throughout the game. The motorcycle serves as the primary method of transportation across the large battlefields during the early stages and is currently indestructible for gameplay reasons. As players progress, they will gain access to additional vehicles that expand their options for navigating the battlefield and handling different situations.

Later, players can acquire a convertible, which replaced the pickup truck from the original announcement because its open roof allows you to fire in every direction while driving. Unlike the motorcycle, the car can take damage and eventually be destroyed. Missions will also include more than repeated castle assaults, with objectives involving besieging fortresses, tracking down English spies, and escorting Welsh nobles through dangerous territories.

As you explore England and Scotland, you can travel on foot or use vehicles, loot enemy villages and forts, and capture territory. 

However, controlling new land comes with consequences, as local barons and nobles can send armies to attack your settlements. This creates a gameplay loop that mixes exploration, combat, resource management, construction, and large-scale defensive battles.

Kingmakers also has a prisoner system with enemy officers. If you catch important enemies alive, you can ransom them for gold, interrogate them for information, or execute them to raise your army’s morale. These choices add another layer to the choices you make after battles and double down on the game’s emphasis on merging strategy with direct action.

The latest gameplay breakdown describes Kingmakers as a project rooted in scale and experimentation, with its bizarre premise supported by strategic management, detailed progression, and destructible environments. Although the developers still need to show how these systems work together consistently in the final experience, the footage gives a clearer look at what lies beneath the game’s chaotic concept.