Gas Powered's latest: Kings and Castles

By Oli Welsh Published 15 February, 2010

A fantasy RTS for PC and consoles.

Strategy specialist Gas Powered Games has announced that work has started on its next big project - a fantasy RTS called Kings and Castles, or quite possibly Chris Taylor's Kings and Castles.

It's described as "an epic real-time strategy game for the PC and next-generation consoles". Players will play as one of three kings vying for control of an "all-new, original fantasy world".

You'll also be able to follow the development closely on Facebook, Twitter (if you follow studio head Chris Taylor, a.k.a. DeathBot9) and at the game's website.

"We want to take our fans on a great adventure with us," said Taylor. "They'll get to go behind-the-scenes and watch the game come to life from start to finish... Synergy will be leveraged, and paradigms will be established. More importantly, buzzwords will be utilised."

Taylor said he wanted to "build the biggest fantasy RTS game" in his funny but otherwise pretty irrelevant first video blog.

Kings and Castles will use Gas Powered Games' existing technology platform, as seen most notably in Supreme Commander and the imminent Supreme Commander 2, due out on 19th March. "Key features include the ability to zoom to any level, incredible maps, and eye-popping visuals that will run on a wide range of systems," says the press release.

No publisher, release date or console platforms were mentioned. Both Supreme Commander games have Xbox 360 versions.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • thegamesthething #1 2 years ago

    (first) link is borked

  • Zapatero #2 2 years ago

    TA: Kingdoms, anyone?

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #3 2 years ago

    Link just needed a bit of http sauce. Fixed.

  • ignatiusjreilly #4 2 years ago

    Only in the games industry could the head of anything be known as DeathBot9 :)

  • KillerMonkey #5 2 years ago

    So, pretty much SupCom: Ye Olde Times Version? Sounds cool. Hope it works out better than Kingdoms this time.

  • Dizzy #6 2 years ago

    Good luck to them. I could use a good Fantasy RTS again, been playing Wesnoth on my iPhone a lot lately.

  • Gastrian #7 2 years ago

    Was interested until the key features press release. I'm sorry but as an RTS player the ability to "zoom to any level" is not a key feature or at least not one to get excited about. Both Supreme Commanders have it, both Dawn of Wars have it, most RTS games on the market have it.

    Good graphics in an RTS game are good but if those are the first things you shout about then I'm seriously worried about the the quality of the title. Are we having a mission based RTS game like Warhammer which has no base base building or unit creation? Are we having Battle for Middle Earth 2's Risk style world map? Is the world map realtime or turn based? What type of tactics are available to me? Does it have RPG elements such as customisable heroes or units? Does it have politics? Does it have realistic unit behaviour? Does terrain play an integral part? Does it have a mega storyline?

    These and many others are things to sell me on an RTS or is this just Supreme Commander Medievel aka Warcraft 2 with pimped out graphics and zoom and nothing to show the great leaps the RTS has made over the past decade?

  • KillerMonkey #8 2 years ago

    ^ It's just an early press release. Don't be so negative about it. You'll undoubtedly get the in-depth information you so desire when the game is nearing completion as they probably couldn't answer half the question you pose even if they wanted to.

    Also, if I understand correctly, did you just call Warcraft a medieval SupCom? Just curious about your sanity.

  • the_mtfr #9 2 years ago

    The PC release, medieval setting and zoom thingie make me think about Stardock as publisher (since Demigod, and Stardock's own Elemental game).

  • Dizzy #10 2 years ago

    "Was interested until the key features press release. I'm sorry but as an RTS player the ability to "zoom to any level" is not a key feature or at least not one to get excited about. "

    I don't think you are reading this right. It probably means you can play at a strategic level and at a tactical level. So a high level view with units as icons giving you a better overview of a massive war and then zoom in to squad level for micromanagement of individual battles.

  • hiddenranbir #11 2 years ago

    Will it finally merge the grand strategy campaign and battles into one seamless entity?

  • Gastrian #12 2 years ago

    @ Dizzy, if they are talking about it that way then Lord of the Realms 3 did that years ago.

    @killermonkey. Yes I did and I'm being perfectly sane. There's a lot of under the hood advances that have updated the game but on a fundamental level it is a basic RTS game built around basic RTS principles. It has bigger maps, bigger unit counts, a larger number of units, a larger zoom scope, a larger etc. and if you applied this scal to Starcraft and Warcraft 2 you'd have an almost identical game. I'm not saying Supreme Commander was a bad game (I didn't like but thats a personal viewpoint) what I am saying is that it is an extremely refined version of the original RTS mould and hasn't deviated from that. Warcraft 3's heroes are a bigger differentiator from the RTS cookie cutter mould than anything Supreme Commander did.

    The point is that the very first thing they mention about their game is the zoom, that's their selling point. Dragon Age's first selling point was that it was an update to Baldur's Gate but with a world history spanning over a thousand years built from the ground up, Fable 2's was its dog, Fable 3 was ruling a kingdom, Darksiders was taking all your favourite action adventure game elements and rolling them into one. Even Supreme Commanders was "Look at the fucking scale of the battle!".

    Your first press release tells us what you feel is one of the most important factors of your game, what you think will get us excited and want to follow your game. This press release just has echoes of Sony's PS3 unveil, just replace RIIIDDGGEE RAACCEERR!! with zoom.
    Edited by 1 at 15/02/10 @ 19:04

  • KillerMonkey #13 2 years ago

    @Gastrian
    I can see where you're coming from but I don't think they're very similar at all. Sure, the basic principles are RTS, but on top of those basics are pretty big differences in their mechanics that have great implications in the way they're played. The "infinite" nature of resources in SupCom versus gold mines and forests that run out in WC. Reclaiming dead units to get a big part of their resources back versus dead orcs are useless. IIRC WC2 is very rock/paper/scissors oriented. SupCom leans a lot more to "throw more units at the enemy". The setting is a cold future of war on apocalyptic proportions versus magic, fairies, orcs and dragons.

    Of course, what pushes your buttons and gets you excited differs from person to person.
    To me "we're making a medieval SupCom", sounds pretty fucking sweet.
    Maybe you want something more innovative, that's understandable. But I can't wait. :)

  • man.the.king #14 2 years ago

    I wish they would bring a new Dungeon Siege. It was one of the first video games I played all the way through. I don't know about others (and this may just be nostalgia on my part), but I really liked it.

  • KillerMonkey #15 2 years ago

    @man.the.king
    Pff, Dungeon Snooze more like. The game pretty much played itself on easy/medium. And on hard it wasn't very fun. Multiplayer was nice if you got it to work though.

  • man.the.king #16 2 years ago

    @KillerMonkey

    Maybe for you. It was one of the first PC video games I played, and for me it was a whole new experience, and really enjoyable. I admit though, since then I have played several games and compared to them, the Dungeon Siege experience was a bit two-dimensional.