Kingmakers Early Access Delayed as Redemption Road Games Prioritizes Quality Over Speed

Kingmakers, one of the most intriguing indie titles in recent memory, has officially hit the brakes on its Early Access debut – and fans are feeling the sting. Originally scheduled for release on October 8, 2025, the ambitious time-traveling action game has now been delayed indefinitely. Developer Redemption Road Games made the announcement through a detailed statement on X (formerly Twitter), explaining that the team needs more time to refine the experience without sacrificing its bold vision.

According to the studio, the decision wasn’t made lightly.

“After much contemplation, we realize that the scheduled Kingmakers launch on October 8 will no longer be possible,” the developers said, expressing sincere apologies to eager fans. But this isn’t your typical delay due to vague ‘technical issues’ or last-minute scheduling chaos. Instead, the message was clear – Redemption Road Games refuses to compromise its vision for the sake of an early release. The team emphasized that the game’s core identity lies in its complexity and sheer scale, and they’d rather delay than trim features to meet a deadline.

For those unfamiliar, Kingmakers is a third-person shooter with a wild premise – players, armed with modern weaponry and vehicles like trucks and assault rifles, are transported back to a medieval battlefield filled with armored knights, horses, and castles. The game’s appeal lies in the chaos of bridging eras: the spectacle of machine guns shredding through cavalry charges, the tactical challenge of overwhelming odds, and the sandbox destruction of entire medieval fortresses.

Redemption Road Games described the project as “an incredibly ambitious, uncompromising game” designed to push Unreal Engine 4 to its breaking point. The team – composed mostly of engineers – built Kingmakers with the goal of simulating massive real-time battles with tens of thousands of AI soldiers, each individually pathfinding and reacting intelligently, rather than relying on pre-scripted events. Every clash continues even after the player leaves the area; nothing is faked or frozen. “We have giant six-story castles where every room can be entered and every wall, floor, and ceiling destroyed,” the studio explained, highlighting the game’s deep commitment to realism and interactivity. Buildings like lumbermills are fully functional structures that can become battlegrounds during sieges – all rendered dynamically in multiplayer sessions.

The team also revealed that Kingmakers supports full drop-in/drop-out 4-player co-op, another feature that significantly raises the bar for technical performance and polish. Maintaining 60 frames per second on mid-range PCs without relying on upscaling tricks has been one of the key engineering challenges. As the developers put it, “We’re an 80% engineering team, and we got into this business to push technological barriers.” They’ve achieved most of what they set out to do – but before asking players to pay for Early Access, they want every system, animation, and effect to meet their own quality threshold.

While the absence of a new release date has left fans disappointed, the studio offered a silver lining. In the coming weeks, Redemption Road Games plans to release a half-hour gameplay deep dive that showcases the latest build, new features, and technical improvements. This presentation aims to reassure fans that the project remains very much alive – and evolving.

Kingmakers first exploded into the public eye earlier this year when its reveal trailer went viral, racking up millions of views and over a million Steam wishlists within days. Its viral fame set high expectations, but maintaining that momentum has proven difficult. As excitement wanes, the question remains: can the final game live up to the spectacular premise of a player mowing down medieval armies with modern firepower? The upcoming gameplay showcase might be the key to rekindling enthusiasm and proving that Kingmakers is more than just a viral gimmick.

For now, players will have to wait a little longer to step into the time-warped chaos of Kingmakers. If the developers’ passion and technical ambition are anything to go by, the wait could very well be worth it.