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King under the Mountain is a simulation-based strategy/management game where you design, build and run a settlement in a fantasy world. Then, once you're up and running, you can send out groups of adventurers to explore and loot other players' creations, playing out through turn-based tactical combat. You start a game on a randomly-generated area map with a few settlers, tools and other provisions, and slowly grow into a self-sustaining village, town, or eventually, a city. You play as one of several fantasy races each with their own unique gameplay mechanics.

Post news Report RSS Development temporarily on hold

King under the Mountain is briefly on hold due to major life changes going on, but we'll be back before the end of the year!

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When I cancelled the Kickstarter campaign, the plan was to re-launch it very soon with a much-reduced goal. This would help fund the freelance work being done on the game (mostly artwork, and some music) which is currently being paid out of my own savings. The original goal with the Kickstarter would allow me to focus 100% on the game, bringing it to release far quicker than development has been so far (as it is currently a "hobby project" in my spare time) as well as help fund this freelanced work.

Having spent a lot of time thinking about it - if I was to follow the plan of re-launching the Kickstarter with a reduced goal, I'd be continuing development in my spare time (which is fine by me!). However, this comes with somewhat poor timing as I'm moving house next week (which if you've gone through a home sale and purchase yourself, you'll know takes up a lot of free time to organise and move things in and out of storage) and my wife is expecting our first baby in August when we'll just about have become set up in the new home.

So after a great deal of thought, I've decided I wouldn't be comfortable taking people's money via Kickstarter now when I couldn't commit to having enough time to devote to development or give a realistic estimate of an initial release window. The £45,000 goal with the original Kickstarter would allow me to switch my day job over to developing the game, with evenings and weekends free to sort out the move and family life. As I'll now have to keep the day job (probably a wiser move in the gamedev world!) unfortunately it's game development which is going to have to be put on hold for a while as I prepare for and then get settled in a new home with a new baby.

This does not mean King under the Mountain has been canned or cancelled though! Instead plans have just had to be set back with a delay of a few months before I can get back into the swing of development towards the end of the year. My apologies for not putting out this update sooner - it was a tough decision and I've also been hoping to hear from some indie-friendly publishers as a Plan B to bring in development funding rather than the Kickstarter campaign but it's not looking likely right now. So as it is things may go quiet for the next few months but then I'll be bouncing back and pressing on to releasing Alpha 1 as described in the Roadmap. I don't know yet if the re-launched Kickstarter will happen (still the most likely option) or if instead I'll just work towards a releasable Alpha 1 version and start a soft early-access style launch from there.

Finally I just want to say thank you for the really surprising amount of extremely positive coverage King under the Mountain has received during and around the Kickstarter campaign and I'm sure it'll kick off again in the future! It was a fantastic experience being able to exhibit the pre-alpha version at EGX Rezzed and The PC Gamer Weekender, showing lots of genuine enthusiasm for the game which was awesome to see and a real motivator to keep pushing forward with it. Thank you for all your support so far and I plan to make this game into what people are hoping for from it!

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