Kinfolk

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• Announcements·25 Jul 2025Official

  Kinfolk Dev Log #3

  Hey Kinfans! No patch notes for this one, so instead we get me rambling about the goings on of development over the last month!The Demo is well Underway!The last month has seen a lot of work being put into quality improvements, both in-game and abroad. There was a large focus at the beginning of the month on polishing up the presentation for Kinfolk. New capsule art was commissioned for the Steam page, which we should see by the end of August, and the messaging for the game has taken on a much more fun-loving and sarcastically whimsical tone and a new an improved gameplay trailer!Back in the game, I've been working on polishing up the game and fixing bugs. So many bugs! Every time I do a test session though, we find less and less, and the big bugs have been all but squashed. The most pressing issues now are related to the main project that I had on the go this month, which was tying kinfolk into the Steamworks API to unlock some much needed standard features, such as grabbing usernames to display in-game, and that Join Game button that a game like Kinfolk absolutely needs. I still need to confirm that some of the last vestigial issues are resolved there, but barring that, we should be... full steam ahead!Gameplay wise, not a lot has changed this time around. The gameplay, art style, control scheme and all that jazz have been crystalized, so the additions to the game at this point focus on improving the little things in the game, and fixing any of the small issues that keep cropping up, so let's dig in to some of those now!The Grim ReaperPlayers can die now, which is.. fun? Up until recently the game wasn't really "dangerous" because the players couldn't actually meet their maker, but now, they can! It's been really important since the beginning for Kinfolk to approach death with two things in mind:First, it should be hard to dieLife in the middle ages was fraught with danger, on the best of days. There were a million ways for a person to kick the bucket, and it's im...
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• Announcements·24 Jun 2025Official

  Kinfolk Dev Log #2

  Version 19 is done, which means I'm on the home stretch to releasing the demo!Thank you to everyone who has been helping out this last month with testing and feedback for the game! I'm really excited to see this project grow and keep getting better with each new version! I had a lot of fun working on this update. I even went a little crazy and changed my test characters head to my kittens face for a few days!The biggest change with this version is definitely the addition of animals and their AI. I'm really proud to say that I went all out with this one, which is also why this update took a bit longer than they have in the past. The AI could really do with a deep dive of its own, but I'll do my best to keep it rather brief here!Animals, in brief!Animals in kinfolk, like everything, have a lot of detail beneath the surface, but it's presented fairly simply to the player. Creatures in Kinfolk have a big ol' list of needs that they need to fulfill, like hunger, thirst and safety. As they go about their business, they're constantly assessing their needs and their surroundings to determine what they need to do to maximize their chance of survival. They respond to the things that they see and hear, as well as what they smell, which means that creatures like deer or rabbits might stay away from places that players have been in a lot, whereas predators like wolves will be more attracted to these places that smell like food. Creatures also have their own diets and things that they're afraid of, which gives you, the player, the ability to really dive into the beastiary of the game to understand how each creature will respond to different situations!Let me know if you'd like me to do a deep dive on the AI for Kinfolk! It's really cool, and really has a lot of depth to it!The Importance of You!Thank you to everyone who has helped test the game so far! I've had a lot of fun exploring this fun little world that we've shaped together!Aside from the addition of the AI, the biggest c...
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• Announcements·22 May 2025Official

  Kinfolk Dev Log #1

  Hey, Steam! This is the first milestone since I've published the Steam Page! How exciting! It's been a really busy month for me. First and foremost, I had some family come visit from out-of-town, which meant almost 10 days with no dev! This was a first for me since beginning work on Kinfolk last October, and it was nice to take a break. I hit the ground running once I got back though. The Steam page got published (let me know what you think!) and I locked in a composer for the OST, and the pixel artist that does all of the big pieces for the game came in hot with several new tilesets and set pieces for the game, which resulted in a huge facelift for the village. Down in the code dungeon, I was hard at work getting some of the last systems implemented for the demo version. The core of Kinfolk is the cards that are dealt at the beginning of each round. These cards are your objectives for the day, and represent the day to day activities of a peasant in the early medieval period. Players are tasked with doing fun and exciting things, like fulfilling weapons orders for the king, collecting waste from chamberpots, or stocking up your stores of food for the winter. All of the cards for the demo version have been finalized and implemented into the game. This brings a close to the core game loop, and serves as the backdrop of activity that the ever evolving chaos of the game is set against. This was a huge milestone, because it leaves only one system left for me to finish developing for the demo! I finished up the Guard's mechanics by implementing a wrestling mechanic and adding in restraints, which is a pretty nifty system. Piggybacking off of the "Grab and Pull" mechanic which was originally inspired by Link to the Past, the Wrestling mechanic comes into effect when one player grabs onto another. When this happens, they can move the other player around, and if they move them around enough, then the target will end up being knocked to the ground and stunned for a moment. Th...
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