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[Raz]

Dear members of DF Community,

As a long-time DF player and member of the forums, I've seen many passion projects come to fruition on these boards.

It is finally my pleasure to announce I've been working on a title myself for the past years, along with a good friend of mine (Christoph, who, being careful with his time and sanity doesn't play DF).

After almost a decade in planning and a few years of prototyping and development, we are finally releasing an Alpha Preview version today!

Here's the release trailer: https://youtu.be/ufbsh8x1DQY

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:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[JimboM12]

that's given me a historical boner. the best kind of boner.

this is just a fancy way of saying you have my interest and also posting to watch.

[Ozyton]

Going by the video and the GIF it's giving me Exanima vibes, but from an over-the-shoulder M&B perspective. I am a sucker for historical medival type equipment/combat so perhaps I'll pick it up =p

[LoSboccacc]

ptw. anyone knows if in the alpha the combat is just fistfights or if there's any meat to it?

[Raz]

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Exanima and M&B definitely do their thing right (and we're big time fans of both games). We of course try give our own spin to the combat mechanics.

ptw. anyone knows if in the alpha the combat is just fistfights or if there's any meat to it?

The combat for this alpha preview version is indeed just fist fights, as there are still some technical things aspects that need to be resolved to really get the feel right. We also don't want to potentially spoil the weapons combat by releasing it outside the context of a campaign where you earn and unlock the weapons you fight with.

Most of the meat in this version comes from the character customization I'd say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmcb0FMO6Pk

[sambojin]

Posting to watch. I'll probably give it a quick go on my days off. I mean, $5, can't be worse than my last McDonald's meal, so probably worth it anyway.

[LoSboccacc]

played around with the alpha

combat is extremely clunky

having to move the mouse to perform a hit makes aiming an exercise in frustration. the reach is wonky because the character refuses to advance while punching. hit detection is likewise weird.

I love how the characters feel heavy and movement is physical, but as far as finesse goes it feels like fighting underwater.

[Mephansteras]

PTW

[Raz]

played around with the alpha

combat is extremely clunky

having to move the mouse to perform a hit makes aiming an exercise in frustration. the reach is wonky because the character refuses to advance while punching. hit detection is likewise weird.

I love how the characters feel heavy and movement is physical, but as far as finesse goes it feels like fighting underwater.

Thanks for giving the alpha preview a go and the feedback!

We use a physically based character controller, so the characters are subject to inertia etc. Compared to other games (where the responsiveness is usually much higher) it indeed feels a bit more sluggish, but we chose to go for it to pair with the pace of the combat system.

As is it takes a fair of time to get used to the controls and get a feel for the reach (extending the arm can be used to measure the distance). With each attack, the character steps into the direction where you're already going - with the size of the step depending on your speed. Make sure to enter combat mode and move around in smallish steps, so you constantly stay in and around engagement range.

That said, the current combat system is very early and one of the reasons we decided to release it, is so we can receive feedback and improve on it more rapidly. The look/aiming clunkiness is noted and from the looks of it is the biggest issue we're going to improve on in the short term!

[Vivalas]

ptw

[Raz]

We've released a rough roadmap and a thank you note following the great feedback we've been getting for the alpha preview If you're curious, it's on our forums.
Starting next weekend, we're also going to have monthly dev streams and dev logs where we talk about recent progress, give some more detailed views of our plans and also cover some behind-the-scenes game developer topics. To find out more, and to let you guys vote what you're interested in most, check out our new sub-board.