Kinstrife - Historical Action RPG with Physics-based Combat

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Raz

Count
Dear members of the TW community,

As a long-time M&B player, former modder and member of the forums, I've long dreamed to create a historical video game of my own.

It is finally my pleasure to announce I've been working on a title myself for the past years, along with Christoph, a good friend of mine. (Soil, also a long time member of these forums!).

After almost a decade in planning and a few years of prototyping and development, we are finally releasing an Alpha Preview version today! I found it no less fitting to let you guys know first!



The game is currently available via Itch.io, for the temporary price of $5. We also have a Patreon for those who'd like to go the extra mile to see this project come to life.

Kinstrife
Kinstrife is a blend between a party & resource management strategy game, and an action RPG with physics-based combat at the center of engagements.
Historical accuracy and realism are key, but we take some liberties in finding a balance between fun gameplay and these elements.
A lot is still unclear about the direction we will take the campaign mode in, but it will have emergent sandbox gameplay, initially set in a high medieval European setting (AD 1300).

As you may be able to tell from the description, we've taken a lot of inspiration from many classics over the years. The party management and campaign parts of game are inspired by classics such as Jagged Alliance 2, X-COM, and the RPG/Action elements are reminiscent of Mount&Blade's.

Other than the physics-based combat, we often experiment with bringing new ideas into these proven concepts - for instance the attribute system currently works with elements such as pain, consciousness and balance, and we plan to extend it with an elaborate health and wound system.

Although still in early development, this first public version of the game contains:
  • Character customization
  • Physics-based combat preview (only hand to hand)
  • Character showcase

Future versions will have:

  • Historical campaign gameplay with squad management
  • Physics-based armed combat
  • Squad/party tactics

We're quite ambitious with this title and have already poured years of passion into it, yet aren't even close to being done dreaming about exciting features we want to put in the game. Our hopes for the long term are that with some success, we can turn this into a framework for historical storytelling and combat simulation, and extend it with additional settings and time periods.

For more information, you can visit our website. If you want to be involved with the game and the direction it's taking, consider joining our forums!

We'd love to hear your thoughts on it so far! Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Christoph & Khaya

Some Gameplay GIFs:
GZFzfn.gif

ck5z%2Fp.gif
 
Holy crap, you're still alive! The strikes shown in your trailer look a little floaty and slow, and floaty is to be expected from any physics-based combat system but I'm wondering if the slowness is the result of a video edit or true to the game's speed.
 
Hell yeah I'm still alive  :iamamoron: . I needed to take some time off to sort some things out (this being one of them) - but it's good to be back in touch with you lot.

Thanks for the feedback though - that footage is actually recorded in slow motion for the purposes of the trailer. Check out these gifs for a better look at the speeds.

GZFzfn.gif

That said, everything (particularly the physics) is still a very early alpha and therefore heavily subject to change and polish!
 
Wow, it's Raz! Great to see you here again  :grin: I remember following your work on that Deus Vult game years back, did that morph into this project or is it completely different? The fist fighting looks really good, I hope that translates into a similarly exciting weapon combat system.
 
We actually started off our first prototypes with weapons combat (see a very old prototype below)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Q9GLwtUUI

We've since upgraded our physics approach, and weapons are a bit more complex to handle technically, so we are currently focusing on getting those interactions to look and feel right for a release.

We do have the combat animations and actions ready for a variety of weapon types, and can't wait to show them!

DanAngleland said:
Wow, it's Raz! Great to see you here again  :grin: I remember following your work on that Deus Vult game years back, did that morph into this project or is it completely different? The fist fighting looks really good, I hope that translates into a similarly exciting weapon combat system.
Cheers! Good to be back  :smile:

I'm impressed you still remember that old DV game! Funnily enough I never stopped working on it, so you could say it has transformed into this game over years of prototyping and exploring feasible game concepts.
 
Hah, I have fond memories of Soil essentially harassing me with PMs here and on IRC with progress reports and pictures of what you lot where doing.
Holy balls, that feels like an entirely different life...


Good on you!
 
Wellenbrecher said:
Hah, I have fond memories of Soil essentially harassing me

Gud, gud. And yeah, damn, it's been years... Anyway, good to be back! I see you've been gracing the forums with your presence less frequently in the last few years?

Scuba Steve said:
Any idea on the system requirements?

Good point, we should add that to our itch.io page. Essentially, a GTX 760 should be enough for running this on medium-high settings at 1080p. A decent CPU, e. g. mid-range from about 5 years ago, should be fine. This is still a bit subject to change as the game evolves, though.
 
Soil said:
Good point, we should add that to our itch.io page. Essentially, a GTX 760 should be enough for running this on medium-high settings at 1080p. A decent CPU, e. g. mid-range from about 5 years ago, should be fine. This is still a bit subject to change as the game evolves, though.

Awesome, looking forward to the full release.
 
Holy hell, talk about blast from the past!

And it's not multiplayer, that's great! I'll go get it right now.

Out of curiosity, the physics based combat slightly reminds me of Exanima, have you guys seen that at all?
 
Looks promising, good luck, and can't wait to see this progress!

Does purchasing the pre-alpha provide access to future updates, or is that only through Patreon?
 
Looking good!

I also wonder if the alpha key provides you with all future updates. (Edit: Only alpha updates are included?)
And do check out Exanima for the physics-based combat.
 
Thanks for the positive comments and interest! It's great to hear people are curious about what we're working on, it's definitely a great boost for morale, which is quite important for a two man passion project like ours :smile: And of course we're also excited to see so many of you guys from back in the day who still remember the Deus Vult phase!

Mr.Milker said:
Out of curiosity, the physics based combat slightly reminds me of Exanima, have you guys seen that at all?

Ermahgerd, it's Merlkir :grin: Yeah, both of us have clocked a couple dozen hours of playtime in Exanima. We definitely see the game as a reference for how dynamic and 'constantly fresh' we'd like our combat gameplay to be. As many have pointed out, though, the "wobbliness" and at times slow pace are major drawbacks of their approach, which we are aiming to solve with a hybrid animation + physics-driven approach.

Tottel said:
I also wonder if the alpha key provides you with all future updates. (Edit: Only alpha updates are included?)

We really appreciate everybody who is supporting us this early in development and we'd love to keep many of these people around for the rest of development. So everybody who gets a key now will of course get all future updates, not just alpha or beta versions. But I can see how that sentence on itch may cause some confusion, I'll update that.
 
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