Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Kingdom Wars 2: Battles
Definitive Edition auto-switch on July 9th
Hey Everyone,
We finally have a release date! KW2DE will be launched on July 11th (with potential for a day or two delay).
And at that point, everyone who owns the original game, will have KW2 Definitive Edition added to your library. This will be absolutely free to all the past players, and you won`t need to take any additional actions (well you will need to download the Definitive Edition)
Please keep in mind that due to major changes from the original game, the progress and saved games will not carry onto KW2DE.
Also - unfortunately players with very old video cards, that do not support Direct X11, will not be able to play Definitive Edition.
We expect quite a few players to join us for launch, week so we hope you will give the game a chance and give it a try on July 11th+.
Also in case you have some spare time, and want to help us final test KW2DE, the open beta is here - you just need to email us to get a steam key to unlock it before release. Details are here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1036440/announcements/detail/3019009900091319943
Definitive Edition Progress Report & Game Comparison
Hey Everyone,
Release is fast approaching, with release window set sometime between June 11 and July 15th. Depending on when the Steam summer sale will happen, and couple of other factors.
In the follow weeks we`ll be continuing to update the beta build, fixing all the reported issues, and including your suggestions. You can join the beta here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1036440/announcements/detail/3019009900091319943
As a reminder - everyone who purchased the original game, will get a free copy of Definitive Edition - a new game added to their Steam library. This will automatically happen on release day. And games are not compatible (saved games, progress e.t.c)
Original vs Definitive Edition This week we wanted to show you how exactly KW2DE differs from the original. When we set to create KW2DE the plan was to redesign the game from the ground up. Sure it shares a lot with the original - but we really wanted for it to play and feel as a new game. Here`s some screenshots and that show what we have accomplished, as well as some key features.
Updated Game Engine Original used our 2005 DX9 game engine. Game now uses our 2018 DX11 engine -better performance, bigger scale and improved graphics.
Epic Presentation The game camera is nearly twice as high, as battlefield control went from up-close view of the original, to the epic top down camera. Players no longer see low poly models up-close, or manage a lot of small battalions, instead the new camera brings out the best in the game, allowing to see entire town with several thousand units on screen.
Much Bigger Battles The game went from hundreds to thousands of soldiers on the battlefield. The original had battalion size of 20 soldiers. Definitive Edition battalion size feature 60 soldiers. Number of Zombies went from dozens to hundreds.
New Main Menu Main Menu was redesigned from the ground up. Main menu is quite important as a lot of gameplay – like crafting new techs, cards e.t.c takes place there.
Updated GUI We spent a lot of work updating in-game GUI, from showing the unit stats, to allowing selecting 16 units instead of 8, scaling and improving the look of the GUI and much more.
Addressing Player Complaints Original game was liked, but various technical issues, bugs in the original game engine, and some gameplay flow issues got in a way of players enjoying the game. With hundreds of reviews and thousands of player forum posts we had a perfect roadmap ready for us. Definitive Edition now addressed majority of players complaint from the original game
Redesigned Gameplay Flow Gameplay flow in DE is faster and streamlined. Battles are quicker, with less things to control and micro-manage, but on a bigger, epic scale.
Progress with Definitive Edition
Hey Everyone,
In case you missed the news - we are back to working on Kingdom Wars 2 - BIG TIME!
Entire game is getting reworked and redesigned, with new engine, sweet new graphics, all the bugs are getting fixed up, and the game is getting a total makeover both in gameplay and presentation.
We are calling this massive update - Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition. And it will be released on Steam as a new game installation, but it will be added to everyone`s library (if you already purchased KW2B) automatically. So yeah - this is absolutely free for all our customers.
Here`s a brief list of what you can expect:
New DX11 game engine with greatly improved graphics
Smoother performance even on mid range system with everything maxed out
Super high zoom out levels
Streamlined and reworked the way you play the game with new main menu
Total re-balance of combat with huge new battalion sizes
Completely reworked GUI - using what we learned when working on Medieval Kingdom Wars
GUI overlay on units - same way we are adding soon to Medieval Kingdom Wars
Ugly unit portraits replaced by pretty 2D pictures, and a lot more GUI changes
We have been working on KW2D for months now, with Dev Langor taking the lead, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. Our goal is to launch the beta towards middle of March.
We`ll keep you posted.
Really exciting for this reboot, and finally doing right by our players.
Work resumed - massive update this winter
Hey Everyone,
We are very excited to announce that we are back to updating KW2B. And more than that - we are completely reworking the game with the new game engine.
I know we have got a lot of bad rep for stopping updates for KW2B and KW1. But as we tried to explain earlier - we hit a major roadblock with our game engine, and updates were simply impossible until our new game engine was complete.
So as soon as we finished our new engine back in October, work has begun on updating KW2B. This project is lead by Dev Langor, who`ll be in charge of all things KW2B as we move forward.
KW2B Definitive Edition - will be free for all our players. As for ETA - we are looking at later on this winter. At least 6 weeks away. But this is coming soon and it`ll be awesome.
We are already playing KW2B on the new engine, and it`s simply amazing. We are also copying a lot of Medieval Kingdom Wars advancements - from new pathfinding, to new unit battalions and so much more. And of-course - the game graphics have improved dramatically.
You can expect to see some new media, and perhaps an early beta update available after the New Year.
Any questions - we`ll be happy to help!
Weeklong Sale
Hey Everyone,
This week we have a great sale promotion lined up for KW2B, at 50% this is the biggest discount we had so far on KW2B. So we hope to see a lot of these new players over the next week.
And for our current players who enjoy a good multiplayer games should see quite a few open battles towards this weekend - just let the knew guys complete the campaign and leave the basics, before showing that really they know nothing:)
During the sale week, we`ll make sure to take a bit of time off of our next title - Medieval Kingdom Wars and actively monitor KW2B forums to answer any questions about the game.
I do have to mention that at this point we have no planned updates to KW2B in the immediate future.
Summer Sale and Fresh Blood for Multiplayer
Dear Players,
We are happy to see so many new faces join Kingdom Wars 2: Battles during this summer sale!
Ah with all the work on our next title - Medieval Kingdom Wars, it`s been a while since we got a chance to post an update. But we`ll be sure to put some attention to KW2B during the summer sale to help the new players get started and answer your questions in the forums.
Meanwhile - if you like the KW2B gameplay please be sure to check out Medieval Kingdom Wars as well, now available on Steam Early Access:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/499660/Medieval_Kingdom_Wars/
And myself and for other KW2B multiplayer fans, we hope to finally see some action in the game lobby, as lately it`s been rather hard to get a multiplayer game going:)
Thanks for your support.
Update 2.3 - "The Looks" is Live!
Dear Players,
The new update 2.3 is now live, it`s a small update, with couple of important changes. With this patch we looked at improving unit responsiveness during PvP combat, as well as greatly improved the visual of the terrain battle maps. In addition you`ll notice better performance and some level updates.
As always - thanks for your support, and so here are the details for 2.3:
-Multiplayer command lag significantly reduced
-Updated terrain art for all terrain sets
-Improvement to the shadow code
-Various menus like Survival or Skirmish now remember the settings of the last game
-Update some art for interface across the board
-The two levels with ruins will have significantly less lag
-Changes to some levels - removed a lot of staircases to ruined walls
-It`s no longer possible to trick kill Dragon Guardian on the ruined levels
-Wells heal significantly better now - 40% increase
-Orcish and Elven healing Springs heal a lot better now - 70% increase
Weeklong Sale and Update 2.3
Hey Guys and Girls,
This week we have a great sale promotion lined up for KW2B, at 30% off after the new lower price. So we hope to see a lot of these new players over the next week.
And for our current players who enjoy a good multiplayer games should see quite a few open battles towards this weekend - just let the knew guys complete the campaign and leave the basics, before showing that really they know nothing:)
Later this week - we`ll also release the upcoming update 2.3 that we`ve previous mentioned.
KW2B Update 2.3 With this update we`ll be adding some features from MKW engine to KW2B, as well as introducing some art updates and balance changes.
With 2.3 KW2B will start looking much better with all new terrain, featuring approach we used in MKW, in addition there`s new shadow code - greatly improving the look of shadows, and finally some changes to camera controls that our players should like and have a "refreshed" visual experience.
In addition we are doing a major change to multiplayer - completely eliminating multiplayer command lag. Downside - the visual multiplayer lag will become more obvious, but from the feedback we have it`s a fair trade.
We are also greatly improving CPU performance on the Ruins levels, during late game, and fixing some pathfinding problems like units not being able to cross bridges.
On top of variety of bug fixes and minor improvements across the board, we are also doing quite a bit towards balancing multiplayer based on your feedback over the past few months.
Update 2.3 and MKW Invities Countdown
Dear Players,
We are happy to say, we are less than two weeks away from finally sending out Medieval Kingdom Wars pre-alpha testing invites.
Same week we`ll release KW2B update 2.3, that we hope will breath some fresh life into KW2B.
So lets dive into each one of these in details.
KW2B Update 2.3 With this update we`ll be adding some features from MKW engine to KW2B, as well as introducing some art updates and balance changes.
With 2.3 KW2B will start looking much better with all new terrain, featuring approach we used in MKW, in addition there`s new shadow code - greatly improving the look of shadows, and finally some changes to camera controls that our players should like and have a "refreshed" visual experience.
In addition we are doing a major change to multiplayer - completely eliminating multiplayer command lag. Downside - the visual multiplayer lag will become more obvious, but from the feedback we have it`s a fair trade.
We are also greatly improving CPU performance on the Ruins levels, during late game, and fixing some pathfinding problems like units not being able to cross bridges.
On top of variety of bug fixes and minor improvements across the board, we are also doing quite a bit towards balancing multiplayer based on your feedback over the past few months.
MKW Pre-Alpha Testing Invites April 14th is the date for the first round of invites to go out.
We have selected quite a few players who we`ll be emailing the invite, and we expect to have additional rounds that will cover majority of our top player population from Kingdom Wars 1 and Kingdom Wars 2: Battles.
Few things to mention - the requirements for the first invite are really high up, we are only inviting our top players. We looked at players with close to 100 hours of gameplay time, and lots of progress.
In addition please keep in mind that we can only send invites via the email that you entered when running KW2B or KW1 for the first time.
If you didn`t make it in this time - don`t worry, chances are if you are one of our veterans you`ll get invited in one of the following rounds.
We also have to mention that installation will come with an NDA agreement, as we have to keep the game a secret for now from the larger community and want to try and avoid leaking screenshot and video of the game this early in production.
And finally - this might be a deal breaker for some of you... But, for the first couple of rounds the pre-alpha build will require a pretty good video card. We are in progress of adding additional LODs to make it playable on all systems, but we are still couple of months away from that. I think from round 3 we`ll finally have game accessible for all ranges of hardware, so requirements will become same as KW2B.
Updates on MKW and KW2B
Dear Players,
Once again it`s taking us a while to bring you the news and the long awaited updates. So hoping this announcement will answer all the questions, and set the dates for the awesome updates and MKW access...
Medieval Kingdom Wars GDC been a busy time for us, but now we are back to the office and putting a lot of hours into Medieval Kingdom Wars.
However - something has interfered with our plans to announce MKW. We are considering working with a publisher to release MKW - as the game is really shaping up into something awesome, and working with a publisher will help attract more players and complete the game on AAA level.
We`ll know by April which way we`r going with MKW - indie and early access by May or publishing it.
With that said - we can`t wait to share the game with our veteran players! We`r calling this a closed limited Alpha testing access. As we mentioned before sometime in March (towards late March) we`ll send out invites to a number of players who have the most hours and achievements with our titles. These player who participate and help us test early MKW alpha build will of-course get the title for free on release.
The only catch we`ll need to do this under NDA, as part of the installation process, as we really hope to keep this awesome game a secret until we confirm if we`ll go the publishing route.
Kingdom Wars 2 We have another sale event coming up in Early April so once again we`ll see some new players, and active PvP population.
And around early April we`ll also release a big update 2.3. It`ll include some cool new features from MKW engine updates, as well as some visual art updates, work on balancing, and variety of fixes and improvements.
