Over the past few months of testing, we have made significant progress with Kingshunt and the performance. The Open Alpha tests in November and February provided valuable data that our team has been working diligently to iterate upon in order to improve our gameplay, feel, performance and diagnostic capabilities. In our March testing, we hit some challenges and have spent the last few weeks addressing those issues. Of course, at the onset of our Alpha schedule we acknowledged that we may see some changes as we move through the different phases and undiscovered work becomes visible. As we have been addressing these challenges, our team has determined that additional polish is needed in order to guarantee a smoother Kingshunt gameplay, and this month we secured more funding to the company and Kingshunt development to do this. I know that is not what you want to hear, but our team and I are committed to excellence for Kingshunt, and honestly, this is the purpose of these Alphas and Betas - to discover issues and address them as early as possible. I am committed to share the good, bad and ugly news for our players and keep kingshunt development open.
As a result, I wanted to let you know that our Kingshunt early access schedule has shifted accordingly. Kingshunt wont make the May release window and we’re moving the launch date to end of 2021. As eager as our team is to open the gateways to Kingshunt realm for you, we ultimately feel this is the right decision in order to make sure core gameplay works and we have enough variety for you to play with and the performance is reflective of the insights we have gained through these alpha tests.
In the meantime, we will continue with our periodic spot testing under NDA with our Kingshunt Alpha testers and Founders, as we work to deploy updates between now and fall’s testing. Expect more regular updates on progress as we get close to the new release date. It’s been a thrill to see the world of Kingshunt take shape with each update - this would not be possible without the help of our community and hard work of our incredible Alpha and Founder testers and. Thank you all for your continued support, patience and feedback as we march forward towards our major beta milestone.
Much love and keep safe,
Teemu Jyrkinen CEO & Creative Director
PREPARE FOR INCOMING WAR... KINGSHUNT CLOSED PLAYTEST MARCH 26th
Closed Test #2. March 26-27th
PREPARE FOR INCOMING WAR...
Carve a path of destruction through an intense battlefield in Kingshunt.
The Kingshunt website offers 3 unique and limited packages, which grant access to our closed Playtest Phase. Get it if you want to take part in the closed playtests!
Our next Kingshunt Playtest is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, March 26-27th.
Servers are online same time: 6 PM – 3 AM Central European Time 10 AM – 6 PM Pacific Standard Time 1 PM – 9 PM Eastern Standard Time
Patch Notes
In this closed test we are bringing you guys our refined gamemode, new hero and balance updates. Utility system and game settings menu has also been reworked fully. Keybinds are finally here!
Quick summary of the new gamemode:
Major changes have been made to the game mode to bring both teams shared objectives and more linear gameplay. Introducing two Cannons for both teams to push; We are mixing payload game modes with tower defense to better indicate where the line of battle is going on on both lanes bringing much clearer objectives for the new and old players to focus on. Tower and minions still play a huge part of the gameplay loop as the minions can push the payloads without the help of players and the only way to keep them from pushing the payload while the players are fighting amongst themselves are well placed towers. When a Cannon reaches the Guardian it will start shooting at it dealing massive amounts of damage to it but the Defenders can still push the Cannon back to prevent their Guardian from falling to a critical condition. Players and minions can still deal damage to the Guardian but the only way to destroy it is with the help of Cannons.
Here is the list of changes:
Major Changes
Overall, gameplay performance has been improved.
Hero camera improvement
New Camera effects
Payload 3D model
Refined Gamemode
Bot Players
Reworked Church map
New hero! Prosecutor is finally here to play with.
Fully reworked utility system.
Attacker minion summons changed
Guardian VFX changes
New In-game settings for graphics and key bindings
Surrender Button
New utility system
Attackers
Spawn special minion These are same like before but we have made changes for banner and Orc minion.
Banner minion, Nerfed barrier amount. Was too powerfull
Orc minion
Player Unique Minions Every character brings two unique minions to the match which they can upgrade by using token points. One unique minion per lane and players can switch what kind of minions they have(Range and Soldier Minion). Permanent buffs to your minions
Armor
Health
Special
Offensive Utilities Battlecry to buff near minions (Does not stack and can only be applied to max 7 minions)
45-second lasting aura on the caster that grants 20% damage buff to minions in a 10-meter radius (2 tokens)
45-second lasting aura on the caster that grants Payload push speed
Defenders
Towers Buildable Towers are now free and every defender player have 2 towers. Long Range and Short Range towers also have permanent upgrades.
Rate of fire upgrade
Projectile Damage Upgrade
Damage and durability upgrade for Tower Operators.
Defensive Structures
<*> Slow Trap <*> Barricade
Defensive Utilities
Lock-down
Tower Heal Area.
Important things to test
The map layout
The gamemode
Prosecutor
The balance around the cannons
The balance around the towers, operators and their respawns
Known Issues
Missing textures
Boundary breaks
Sound effects might cause problems
Kingshunt is still in Alpha, so you can expect to see bugs, inconsistent performance, and balance issues - but your participation and feedback will be invaluable as we continue to refine the game. Join our community and share your stories with other warriors!
Gear up The Kingshunt Team
Kingshunt Closed test 02.2021 - Patch Notes
Closed Test #1. This Saturday, February 27th
We are happy to announce the closed test will take place this Saturday. This test is going to be different from the rest. This test focuses on game mode and balance changes.
The Kingshunt website offers 3 Unique and limited packages, which grant access to our closed Playtest Phase. Get it if you want to take part in the closed playtests!
We hope that you'd be excited to know that with this Closed Test we are preparing for a much larger test. European servers will run at the same time on a following schedule: · 9 PM – 12 AM Central European Time · 12 PM - 3 PM Pacific Time This test is confidential. While you are free to talk about your experience, releasing any in-game footage, screenshots or streaming is STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Patch Notes
In this closed test we are bringing you guys our refined gamemode and map changes. We have only included all the necessary stuff in this build to test the gamemode so you won’t be seeing a lot of changes to runes or utilities yet.
Quick summary of the new gamemode:
Major changes have been made to the game mode to bring both teams shared objectives and more linear gameplay. Introducing two Cannons for both teams to push; We are mixing payload game modes with tower defense to better indicate where the line of battle is going on on both lanes bringing much clearer objectives for the new and old players to focus on. Tower and minions still play a huge part of the gameplay loop as the minions can push the payloads without the help of players and the only way to keep them from pushing the payload while the players are fighting amongst themselves are well placed towers. When a Cannon reaches the Guardian it will start shooting at it dealing massive amounts of damage to it but the Defenders can still push the Cannon back to prevent their Guardian from falling to a critical condition. Players and minions can still deal damage to the Guardian but the only way to destroy it is with the help of Cannons.
The map and the gamemode are still a work in progress but we are currently happy to showcase it in a closed environment.
Here is the list of changes, things to test out and known issues:
Changes
New Gamemode
Game in one phase only
Shared Objective for both teams: Cannons on both lanes
Checkpoints in the halfway of the map. Payloads can’t move back past checkpoint
Operators respawn at towers after a while they have been killed. Respawn timer rises with each operator death
Minion aggro logic tweaked
Guardian has been drastically changed.
Guardian no longer moves around
Guardian moveset changed
Health increased
Guardian health divided into three sections; Guardian starts regenerating health after it has not taken damage for a while up to the next section
“The Guardian fight has been redesigned so it would feel more fair for players to fight against each other in the area and that the Cannons should be the ones to deal most of the damage to the Guardian. Defenders are still in the upper hand in this area but with these changes the fight around the Guardian should not feel as hectic and attackers should no longer feel necessary to sacrifice their lives for the sake of destroying the Guardian.”
Important things to test
The map layout
The gamemode
Guardian fight
The balance around the cannons
The balance around the towers, operators and their respawns
Known Issues
Missing textures
Boundary breaks
Character basic attack slows down sometimes
Utility costs are unbalanced
Future plans
We are continuing on developing this gamemode and bringing more customization to your playstyle through utilities and runes. To be more specific we are planning on introducing traps and barricades that can be built anywhere on the map, ways to destroy them, player owned minions and upgrades, tower upgrades, active runes, playable characters and much more! Of course all of these things are subject to change.
FEBRUARY 2021 ALPHA SUMMARY
Hello Warriors!
Open alpha was a very important milestone for the team, enabling us to run our servers for the longest period so far. With your participation and feedback, we were able to have over ten thousand players help us test Kingshunt and provide us with hugely important, valuable feedback.
We’ve said it before and we’ll carry on saying it - THANK YOU. To all of you who joined in, we simply can’t do this without you and all your awesome feedback which has gone toward the ongoing development of Kingshunt.
Below, we’ve compiled a summary of how we think Alpha went. We also want to give some insight into how our decision making is informed and share some focus points that we’re now working hard on - check it out:
HOW CLOSED BETA WENT AND WHAT WE SAW DURING IT:
There was great participation from both new and returning players, both in-game and across our community channels, contributing to the amount of invaluable feedback we received.
While general optimization and performance improves with every iteration of Kingshunt, there is still a lot of room for improvement, and we understand how important this is. This continues to be an ongoing focus for us.
Finding the right balance for towers, minions and heroes is also an ongoing effort for us, and something that we’ll continually update. We are not happy with the current game mode phasing and we will introduce updated game mode for next test.
There was some inconsistency in the experience across different regions due to matchmaking times and session sizes, related to low population areas/timezones. We’ll be looking for ways to help improve this. NA server times were hard for the players.
Something heard loud and clear was the request for more clarity around enemy UI, combat elements and visual queues (FX). We’ll be making key refinements in this area.
WHAT'S GOING INTO OUR DECISION MAKING:
We rely heavily on the data and telemetry systems we have in the game. Your participation in our playtest helps us build out this data, which in turn helps us continue to refine and improve Kingshunt!
We pay very close attention to community feedback provided via the in our Discord feedback channels, and community chat in general. If you still have feedback, please continue sharing them with us!
Finally, we appreciate the valuable and in-depth feedback given from our growing content creator community, who put aside their time to share thoughts and ideas. If you’re a content creator or want to be a community representative of our game, email us at kingshunt@vakigames.com or reach out on Discord or Twitter with the Kingshunt content you’ve made and let’s chat!
WHAT WE’RE FOCUSING ON IMPROVING NEXT AND WHY:
[previewyoutube="tT9BLpU_Op8;full"]
Console and crossplay availability were also popular topics of discussion. They are very important to us too, since we want to make Kingshunt available to as many people as possible. While there are no dates or times to share on these topics, rest assured that we’re working on them.
We’ll be working on the expansion of the Rune and Summon system, as well as more tower variants and minion variations.
Next playable hero! Yes this something which many of you asked. Prosecutor is an exciting guy to play and we will do a hero overview about him. We also have a new support hero in the pipeline which we will also reveal soon.
We’ll be doing an in-game economy pass to allow for a more enjoyable and engaging progression system, as well as rewards.
We received great feedback and ideas from players and content creators especially, about rewards, leaderboards and other systems.. We’ll be investigating these suggestions.
We’re looking at ways to refine the minimap to improve the PvP experience. For example, ways to make it harder for players to track other players over long distances, and providing more counter-play options for those who want to avoid detection as a tactical strategy.
Another topic we saw frequently being discussed on our Discord channels was around the disconnects and leavers in a match. We’re working on the match experience around the game to enable more ways to finish a session, example surrender or give missing players team buffs or more resources. Penalty for leaving the match is something we will add too.
The biggest problem with the game is now the first time experience, jumping directly to the PvP game is really punishing and causes bad experiences for new players. Tutorial is a high priority now.
We’ll be heavily investing in social systems to address factors like party-up capabilities, friends lists, allow players to communicate with Ping-system, smarter matchmaking algorithms and more.
We’re exploring and testing a number of features, including on Twitch. You might see some activity on our Twitch channel and from our dev team on there soon. We won’t be streaming any Kingshunt game footage but we wanted to give you the heads up, in case some of the very eagle-eyed among you spot movement happening there!
What’s next? That’s likely your question. The answer is - very exciting times!
We’re aiming to be back online and welcoming players back into Kingshunt Soon!
We’re very excited about the next stage of Kingshunt and we’re looking forward to sharing more details and info with you soon.
Until then, we’re focusing on addressing all the feedback points we’ve mentioned in this blog, working hard to continue improving Kingshunt and getting ready for the next time you’re in-game.
Stay safe
Vaki
SERVERS OFFLINE
Wishlist and Follow to get all the updates about the playtests and launch date!
Announcing next test session soon
Hero Reveal - Kingshunt Stream
During the Live stream, you will be able to share all your questions about the game with the developers and the rest of the community.
Kingshunt combines the best and most ruthless aspects of combat in tower defence and souls-like games with the tactical nous required in real-time strategy games
First of all we would like to thank you all for your feedback on our first closed and open alpha tests. All the feedback is really valuable to us and we have made a lot of changes into the game based on them. We want to make the game better with you.
This patch addresses mostly visuals and the performance side of the game but also has a lot of small tweaks to gameplay and QOL changes. There is also a lot of backend implementation that is not directly visible to the end user. Additional content, that is internally being tested at the moment, is on the works for future playtests.
Below we’ll be listing the biggest changes. As always, we’re watching feedback roll in across all our channels. We’ll be playing the game with you and collecting feedback. At the bottom of the changelog you can also see what we’re eyeing up for coming updates.
Gameplay
Added announcer to the game!
Added player profile progression
Maximum Squad size reduced to 3 for alpha testing
Towers placement is a bit clearer now, now two different build options: Pro and Standard.
Animation replication fixed!
FX
Updated Healing FX elements
Added new Knight Leap Strike FX
Updated Demigod Heavy Swing FX
User interface and user experience.
We noticed that players didn't really know what they could actually do in the game. We have worked on user experience and especially first-time user experience to make it smoother. You will find new UI elements and polished experience for:
Map Objectives and messages with texts and Announcer voice
New visual cue updates for UI elements
Low HP Indicator
Guardian taking damage flash
Guardian
Guardian’s behaviour has been changed to be less punishing against Attackers. Guardian no longer attacks players IF there are minions in it’s aggro area and has a smaller aggro break range.
Runes
New rune: Fight or Flight
New rune: Treliv Potion
New rune: Coward
Adjustments and additions to older runes
Utilities
Restricted Defenders to only own 2 towers at a time
Towers and Barricades can now be build with less restrictions
New Utility Menu
Banner has a maximum health of 15,000 that regenerates automatically and will be disabled for 60 seconds on reaching 0 hp
Heroes
All Heroes dodge abilities have increased 0.4s cooldown
Animations updates and reworks
Knight
Knight’s Q has received a small buff to it’s speed
Knight Leap Strike is now faster and works better visually
Enchantress
M1 damage reduced from 80 to 75
Upcoming
Clearer objective for players
New Hero
Scaling to more abilities like Legena’s heals and Knight’s ultimate
New Runes
New Utilities to bring out true defensive variation of tower defense genre
New ways to gain utility points
KINGSHUNT ALPHA 3!
Kingshunt Dev Update - Playtest 3
[previewyoutube="83L7WnPIUyY;full"]
The moment we have been waiting for. The answers to the most asked questions in Kingshunt community - “When is alpha?”
Kingshunt is entering a new phase of playtesting. Your participation and feedback will help to define the game’s ongoing development - your voice matters. Kingshunt playtest phase isn’t a polished alpha - you can expect to see bugs, varied performance, and balance issues. However, by participating you get to be one of the first warriors to take part in the war and join the development team in this crucial step in the game’s development.
Time Schedule
6 PM – 12 AM Central European Time / 9 AM – 3 PM Pacific Time
AND NOW TO THE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:
Q: When alpha? A: Open alpha starts on Feb 3! No signups required for this test! This playtest will happen during the Steam Game Festival event where Kingshunt will be playable as a Demo. Just click the demo button to get Kingshunt in your library! This will be the longest and biggest test ever for us! 5 Days of Kingshunt iiks!! :exploding_head: :boom: :tada:
Q: Can I stream the Open Playtest?
YES! We encourage you to Keep an eye out for updates on our website and social channels. If you’re a content creator and are interested in future streaming opportunities, feel free to send an email to kingshunt@vakigames.com and we’ll get back to you.
As we’ve said many times your feedback means the world to us and helps us make Kingshunt better, especially during the early stages. Please let us devs know how you feel about the game! Discuss the gameplay & alpha on https://discord.gg/Q38bfUR
Kingshunt Open Alpha Weekend Starts Now!
Kingshunt - Welcome to Alpha!
The Kingshunt Playtest is live! Team up and gear up! Playtest ends on Sunday, November 29th,5 PM Pacific Time. Jump in before it's too late!
Kingshuntis still in Alpha, so you can expect to see bugs, inconsistent performance, and balance issues - but your participation and feedback will be invaluable as we continue to refine the game. Join our community and share your stories with other champions!
Most importantly, have a great time!
[previewyoutube="83L7WnPIUyY;full"]
Kingshunt is a action multiplayer available now in Steam. Learn more at http://www.kingshunt.com.
Kingshunt’s gameplay pits two teams of heroes against each other in intense 5v5 matches. One group, the Defenders, consists of the forces of Light and the Attackers consists of the forces of Undead.
Group up with friends and dominate battlefield. Request Access now in Steam Store page! Kingshunt is developed by Vaki Games
Its Time for OPEN PC Alpha Playtest!
We're pleased to announce our second Alpha phase.
Overview
The second Alpha test is a chance for players new and old to dive into Kingshunt and check out the progress we've made in the last few weeks.
We're so happy with the feel and responsiveness of the game, overall the feedback has been great and the game is fun to play. We'll be adding even more elements to this part of the game but think we've built a great foundation. Some of the areas we're looking to improve are hit detection, projectile logic, player dodges/dashes, impact sound effects and screen effects.
This time we will use Steam's new feature called Playtest for playtesting. This will make process much smoother for long term and we are excited about it!
Remember to request access!! If you have Kingshunt key from the last session it wont work this time!! There is a notification about it if you try to play it!!
What's new?
ːsteamhappyː - Performance optimisations ːsteamsaltyː - Main Menu Hero infos ːsteamhappyː - User Experience changes(UX) ːsteamsaltyː - Map Modifications ːsteamsaltyː - HUD Updates ːsteamhappyː - Visual Updates - & More.
We'll be sharing more detailed patch notes closer to the Alpha weekend.
Alpha Details
We’ll be playtesting Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th from 11 AM – 5 PM Pacific Time, so come join us and try out the improved Kingshunt experience.
The Future
There's a lot of stuff we have planned for the future, some of it already in production! We have new heroes, New Runes, game mode changes and much more. We can't say much at the moment but we hope to update you more frequently as we progress.
