The upcoming Dungeons and Kingdoms—which releases in early access on Steam soon—falls into the genre mashup category for me. Like Mount and Blade and Crypt of the Necrodancer, it takes two great tastes and sees if they taste great together. This time around we’ve got a medieval kingdom sim mashed up with soulslike dungeon delving, and it looks promising.
The first outing from Canadian solo dev Lincoln McCulloch, aka Uncle Grouch Gaming, Dungeons and Kingdoms will have you take a ragtag group of refugees from an “unlivable homeland” and build them a nice place, with tree chopping, crop planting, and all that good stuff. You can construct buildings on the fly from over 500 pieces and save your designs as blueprints you can share on Steam Workshop.
Dungeons and Kingdoms goes beyond city building and lets you transform the terrain around you. You can smooth out areas to facilitate farming, create a moat around your castle, even lift up a hill to stick an archer tower on.
It sounds like you’ll need the moats and towers, because the game features a day and night cycle with raiders and animals that threaten your faithful followers. You’ll go out and hunt, protect your village, and upgrade your infrastructure. There’s even a fox you can pet apparently, which was the highlight for me.
To add the peanut butter to the chocolate, the game also has dungeon delving where you’ll explore crypts and battle monsters in 3rd person combat. The trailer on the Steam page features a big worm thing, a nasty lookin’ demon, and a dragon to battle… and who doesn’t love battling dragons? The dungeon battles will let you secure treasure to bolster your coffers, but also unlock unique resources and tech upgrades to improve your kingdom.
The website also talks about attracting legendary heroes you can take with you on your sojourns. Between them and your colonists, it sounds like there will be a fair amount of customization available for different adventuring and playstyles.
Dungeons and Kingdoms is expected to hit early access on Steam later this year or in early 2025.
