The game world is built on a series of interlocking systems which combine together to simulate a living, breathing world. As night changes to day, trees and plants will grow (or not) based on sunlight and rainfall. The local environment and changing seasons have effects on the native flora and fauna. Your settlers and other characters have their own personal social and physical needs that you’ll have to fulfill to keep them happy (or at least stop them from breaking and going insane!)
It’s an important design goal that it’s possible to play the entire game without getting into armed conflict with other factions (if you choose to). Although weapons and combat can be significant parts of gameplay, we wanted to make sure you can peacefully build up a fully-functioning town to have the satisfaction of sitting back and watching your settlers go about their business in an “art farm” style of play.
As well as different ways to build and grow your settlement (do you focus on mining? farming? crafting? buying and selling goods?), in King under the Mountain you can play as several different races and factions each with their own unique gameplay elements. You could build a dwarven fortress dug deep into the side of a mountain, a town of humans at an important river crossing, or a tribe of orcs hunting and raiding others. More than just different races to play as, we want to introduce completely new play styles as unusual factions – perhaps a lone wizard building their secret lair with golems they have constructed, an evil necromancer raising an army of the dead, a dragon amassing a hoard of gold in a giant cave system, or even an invasion of demons attacking the material world.
