Kingmakers Hits Steam Early Access This October

Kingmakers is officially dropping into Early Access on Steam on October 8, 2025, and it’s bringing rocket launchers to the 15th century.

This isn’t your usual medieval war sim. Kingmakers is an unhinged alternate-history sandbox where you travel back 500 years to medieval England and rewrite history with modern military firepower. It’s not about realism—it’s about absurd, large-scale fun. Think Call of Duty meets Mount & Blade, set in the Age of Chivalry, with a touch of Hot Tub Time Machine energy.

There’s a long legacy of films and stories that love to play with this idea of modernity crashing into the past. Army of Darkness (1992) threw a chainsaw-armed Bruce Campbell into the Middle Ages. Black Knight (2001) sent Martin Lawrence back in time with 21st-century swagger. Even Timeline (2003) imagined archaeologists using high-tech knowledge to survive medieval France. Kingmakers picks up this same idea, but makes you the cause of the chaos.

You’re not just observing history. You’re breaking it—one grenade at a time.

You can use an AK-47 to shoot knights. Or you can use grenades and rocket launchers to wreak havoc on the battlefield. — DSO Gaming

In terms of gameplay, Kingmakers blends third-person shooting with large-scale real-time strategy. You can seamlessly swap between two modes: boots on the ground or general’s eye view. One moment you’re gunning down knights from a Humvee, the next you’re zooming out to give tactical commands to cavalry and archers. No menus. No downtime. Just instant control.

The battlefield supports thousands of units on screen, all driven by next-gen AI. According to the devs, every soldier runs on multi-threaded logic that governs how they move, fight, and even decide who to follow. Combine that with a procedural animation system, and you’ve got chaotic, lifelike battles that don’t repeat themselves. It’s not just quantity—it’s believable chaos.

Your options in command mode are solid. Control squads of swordsmen, spearmen, cavalry, archers, and more. Assign targets, defend zones, or flank enemies while placing defensive structures like barriers and walls. You can play aggressively or defensively, micromanage every step, or let the AI handle the boring parts while you snipe from a tower.

This is the kind of game that lives in extremes. Don’t expect historical accuracy or careful pacing. This is about what happens when a single player with modern firepower walks into a medieval battlefield and flips the script. Kingmakers isn’t aiming for realism. It’s aiming for mayhem. And it looks like it’s going to nail it.

The new trailer shows all of this in motion—chaotic battlefields, slow-motion kill shots, knights clashing with APCs, and plenty of artillery. It’s Unreal Engine 5 under the hood, though the trailer does show some obvious pop-in, so we’re not expecting full Nanite/Lumen support just yet. There's no word on system requirements, but the devs better ship with DLSS/FSR/XeSS support, because this game is going to be heavy.

If you're the kind of player who wants full control over combat and strategy, Kingmakers has you covered. If you're the kind of player who just wants to shoot crossbowmen in the face with an M4, you're covered too. A game rarely offers both of these experiences without compromise. That’s what makes this one worth watching.

Whether this becomes a cult hit or a chaotic mess depends on how well it runs and how deep the systems are. But it’s already doing something unique: it makes medieval war weird again. That alone is enough to put it on the radar.

Wishlist the game, Steam Early Access starts October 8. Trailer’s out now. If Battlefield, Age of Empires, and Red vs Blue had a strange child, this would be it.