Kinhold: nothing here is scenery
This is the first proper look at Kinhold, the game that has been taking most of my time. Kinhold is a third-person survival and settlement-building game set in a fully destructible world. You play a single character who does not age, guiding a line of villagers who very much do. You can play it alone, or with a second player in co-op.
Nothing here is scenery
The line I keep coming back to is that nothing in Kinhold is decoration. Every stone, every tree, and every inch of soil is a real resource sitting in a real place, and it stays gone once it is taken. Dig a hillside out and the hillside is gone. Clear a forest for timber and it will not regrow. The interesting part is that your villagers can also dig out that hillside and cut down that forest.
The world is not a menu of resource nodes to farm, it is terrain you and your settlement are permanently editing, and you get to shape the world you live in.
Your villagers can only collect what you have found first
Your villagers can only work with what you have discovered, so exploring is how your settlement gets access to resources. Find a seam of iron or gold, and your villagers will mine it for you.
They are born, they grow, and they die
Villagers are born as children. They grow up, they work, you arm them, they get old, and they die, and the settlement carries on without them. You are the constant. Everyone else is temporary. Building something that outlasts a generation means thinking past the villager standing in front of you.
Something out there would like to test whether you can die - permanently
You are the only one here who does not age but that is not the same as being safe. There are enemies out in the world who are perfectly happy to find you - and kill you. When you die, you respawn at the last bed you slept in, minus your inventory. Collect your lost items, and prepare for the next raid on your settlement. If you are brave enough, turn some of your villagers into warriors, and lead your army against enemy settlements.
Playing with someone else
Kinhold can currently be played solo or in two-player co-op. Explore and go to war with your friends.
What’s next
Two major things on the roadmap that are not in yet, and both change the shape of the game rather than just adding to it.
Water. Adding water to a world that is fully destructible is not a texture problem, it is a simulation problem: if you can dig anywhere, then water can go anywhere. Getting that to behave sensibly, and to stay affordable to run, is the interesting part.
Versus mode. Sometimes you don’t want to fight alongside your brother, you want to fight them! A one on one mode, settlement against settlement, which puts every choice you made about where to dig and what to knock down in front of another player who can exploit it.
More updates to come!
If you want the updates as they land, keep an eye on the devlog, and the Kinhold game page has the current status.