Developer Redemption Road and publisher tinyBuild have announced that their highly ambitious action-strategy game Kingmakers has been delayed indefinitely in order to ensure players feel like their money was “well spent” when they buy it.
In a message on Steam, Redemption Road says that the game, which was originally slated to launch in Early Access on Wednesday, needs some additional time in the oven before the studio “feel[s] good about charging money for it”.
The developer says it doesn’t want to cut any of Kingmakers‘ planned features in order to get the game “out the door earlier”, and that the game’s many ambitious systems mean it’s pushing Unreal Engine 4, on which it’s based, to its “absolute limits”.
According to Redemption Road, Kingmakers will simulate battles with “tens of thousands of soldiers”, each of whom has “AI and pathfinding that rivals what you’d expect from an AAA third-person shooter”.
Additionally, walking away from a battle doesn’t stop the carnage; the developer says the fight “continues to play out”, and that each mission in the game happens on “a massive map that each player on the server is free to explore”.
All of this is to say that Kingmakers‘ ambition is big, and so Redemption Road says it wants to spend “a bit more time on content polish” before the game is released, even as an Early Access title.
This isn’t the first time Kingmakers has been delayed. The game was originally due to launch in 2024, but in December of that year, it was pushed back to 2025. Whether or not it’s still able to launch this year isn’t clear right now, but I wouldn’t put my money on that happening.
Redemption Road is promising more information about Kingmakers, including a gameplay “deep dive”, soon. In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam right now if you want to keep up with its progress.
