This pages lists the (very likely to change) development roadmap for King under the Mountain. This isn’t a completely exhaustive list of every planned feature – more an overall view of where we’re going and what we’re planning to do.

Colour key:

Green – Done

Blue – Currently being worked on

Grey – Planned for the future

Red – Out of scope, not something we currently plan to implement

We’re also listing each of these under a section roughly corresponding to a major release or set of releases. For example, once we’re officially in “Alpha” there will most likely be monthly releases adding more features and content as we build towards the next major milestone. The further down the list features are, the larger they are in scope and more likely to move up or down the list, or more likely, get split up into a smaller set of features which make up the whole.

Alpha 4 release

Alpha 4 goes back to adding some important gameplay features.

Brewing and taverns: A dwarf is only truly happy to work with a good tankard of ale. This feature covers a wide range of brewable beverages.

In-game tutorial: A series of tutorial prompts to pop up on first use of a new feature (or that can be disabled entirely).

Production management: Controls for the player to determine how much of what gets crafted and produced.

Job prioritisation: This covers both manual prioritisation of specific jobs by the player, as well as a way to set overall priorities for different types of tasks.

Alpha 5 release

Stockpile allocation: Control over which kinds of items and resources are assigned to stockpiles of your choosing.

Saved game management: While currently you can only have one saved game, this feature opens this up the level you would expect, with the ability to have saves for multiple settlements at once.

Particle effect system: This is more of an extension to the game engine to allow for different kinds of in-world special effects.

Visible job progress: A relatively small quality of life feature – being able to see how much progress a settler has made on their current work.

Constructing roofs, flooring and rooms: Only really important when weather and the environment has an effect, this lets you put a roof over your settler’s heads, as well as providing a better view of where roofs are or are not

Alpha 6 release

Kickstarter “Design a new crop for farming” fulfilment: Based on the ideas that have been floated so far, expect some weird and wonderful new crops to be added to the game, possibly stretching the definition of what a “farmable crop” is!

Basic mechanisms: Covering simple “automation” of gears, pressure plates and levers to open doors, move things around, possibly introducing some basic traps.

Underground pipes: As an extension to mechanisms, this introduces an “underfloor” view for placing and building pipes for more effective liquid transportation.

Advanced Farming: The soil will lose nutrients through extended farming which will need replacing through fertilizers or leaving the ground fallow. This will also cover irrigation using water pumps, channels and pipes to keep crops watered.

Jobs: Fishing: While not a very dwarvish pursuit, fishing can help supplement a settlement’s dietary requirements, though it may carry dangers of its own…

Cooking meat: Finally your dwarves can taste more than just soup and bread with the introduction of meat!

Alpha 7 release

Nobles and their demands: As your settlement increases in prestige, you’ll start to attract the attention of members of the (initially dwarven) nobility. These dwarves don’t work and make sometimes unreasonable demands of the rest of your population, but have the bonus of increasing your prestige by inhabiting your settlement.

!Fire!: You’ll need to start paying attention as to where you put flammable materials.

Weather and more environment detail: Changing weather types that will affect your population and the environment. Rain, snow, blistering heat!

Alpha 8 release

Detailed injuries and health: Rather than simply being alive or dead, there’s all the fun states inbetween!

Wildlife and hunting: Along the same theme, this update adds wild animals (both peaceful and not) to the environment, most of which can be hunted for their precious, precious meat and other resources.

Alpha 9 release

Combat and military: Until this point in time, every settlement lives in peace and harmony, at one with the world and each other. No longer is that the case with this feature, as the basics of combat and injuries mean everything is no longer so peaceful. Draft settlers into your military to defend the town from attack!

Elves and the woodland protectorate: Though not intended to be a playable race in the game, elves will show up and get quite upset if you cut down too many of the perfectly healthy, living trees in your environment.

Cave monsters: Sometimes you’ll find particularly unpleasant and aggressive creatures when you start digging a bit too deep into the mountain. A good reason to have your newfound military!

Alpha 10 release

Hostile invasions: Up to now the worst you’ve had to deal with is aggressive creatures and monsters. The increasing wealth of your settlement will start to attract small bands of bandits and marauders, right up to whole armies from other civilisations attempting to take over your turf! Balance it out a bit by being able to build fortifications and defenses.

Peaceful mode: That said, at a certain cost to your embark points, you can play a passive, peaceful game that won’t come under attack, for players who prefer such things.

Steam Early Access milestone!

We don’t want to release on Steam Early Access until we have a relatively polished, well-featured Alpha version. We believe this offers the best chance of success as despite the Early Access label, Steam users expect a relatively final product. Once the above has been implemented, the game will launch on Steam, and then the following features will be added during the Steam Early Access period.

Detailed embark screen: Rather than starting each game with a set number of dwarves with specific items and equipment, this feature will open up a screen for customising your starting population and resources. This will also include settings for map generation (such as making it more dangerous or having more resources) at a cost of having more or less other “points” to spend.

Code mod support: Not just data definitions – opening up the game to accept mods with code that can hook into existing features or build entirely new ones

Central mod repository: Not necessarily meaning Steam Workshop, creating and easily sharing mods is a key goal for King under the Mountain and a central repository to store and record mod information will make some of the later (more multiplayer-like) features possible.

Double doors: Doors to cover not just one tile, but two!

Traps and advanced mechanisms: Building on the basics of mechanisms, more advanced traps and mechanical features.

Lava and magma: Is your mountain an active volcano? Despite the dangers of digging straight into molten rock, there’s benefits in the form of:

Advanced smelting and alloys: Covering both the use of magma as a heat source and producing (a whole range of) alloys of different metals for different physical properties.

Food spoilage: No longer will your harvested crops last forever, you’ll have to plan more for the seasons, particularly the winter frost. Salting or smoking meat is an alternative! This will also include harvested crops rotting faster if they’re left unpackaged, compared to keeping them in a crate or sack which will have to be produced separately.

Raising cattle: Rather than always hunting for meat, you can raise farm animals too, though they’ll need to be supplied with their own food and water.

Trading and caravans: Merchants and caravans will periodically visit your settlement, offering goods in exchange for your wares. A settlement that finds itself rich in one resource but lacking another will greatly benefit!

Underground rivers and pools: Adding to the theme of more interesting underground areas, you’ll find water sources beneath the mountain.

Jewellery and special gems: Rarer and potentially magical gems can be found within the mountain, with a host of special uses.

Monstrous crafting materials: Inspired by Monster Hunter, the larger and more dangerous monsters found within the game can be a source of rare or even unique crafting materials, to give the player a good reason to put their military in such danger.

Babies and procreation: Thought it might take a while, there’s other methods of increasing a settlement’s population than relying on immigration.

Character animations: It’s the little touches that count, like being able to see your settlers mining away into the mountain.

Skill levels and professions: How good a settler is at a specific task will now influence how successful or not they are at it, or what is produced.

Player account website: The first step in the asynchronous multiplayer aspect of the game as well as a means of fulfilling Kickstarter rewards such as designing a settler, a section of the website that owners of the game can log in to and manage their account.

Expanded dwarven settler customisation: As a precursor to allowing Kickstarter backers to design a settler in the game, we’ll be adding more appearance options for the dwarves. As other races are added later, backers will be able to change to these as well as update their selections.

Kickstarter “Design a settler” reward fulfilment: One of the headline backer rewards from Kickstarter is the ability to both name and design (pick hair and skin colour; hair and beard styles; as well as a profession/outfit) settlers that will show up in players’ games. This feature adds a widget to the account-based section of the website for backers to play around with designing and editing their character. Note that this will only support dwarves initially, to be extended to humans and orcs later, and the online tool will stay open for backers to make modifications or change their character completely during the game’s development.

In-game credits: Several Kickstarter and Patreon rewards include an inclusion in the game credits, which will be implemented at this point (alongside developer and freelancer contributions in the credits).

Historical records and engravings: Relive and refer to historic events in your settlement’s past as your stone masons carve out grand tapestries in stone!

Jobs: Runecrafting: One of the more “end-game” gameplay features is the ability of dwarven runesmiths to imbue weapons and equipment with magical abilities via the mystical art of runecrafting. Training a runecrafter is a very slow and intensive process, but attracting them as an immigrant requires your settlement to have a lot of prestige, which is a game mechanic to give an actual use for:

Other races and civilisations: The world of King under the Mountain is home to a lot more than just dwarves, orcs, elves and humans. This update will look to flesh out the other inhabitants of the world and their impact on your society.

Underground chasms: Sometimes you’ll come across a seemingly bottomless chasm which will have more dangers than simply crossing it.

Capturing prisoners: Whether for ransom or otherwise, coming under attack means you’ll have the means and opportunity to take prisoners of war. Do with them what you will, but be aware of the consequences!

Law and justice: Not every settler is happy to contribute to the community fairly. Your military also doubles as a police force for the occasional law-breaker, who have their own methods of dealing out justice.

Food supplies management: Another management screen/view for current food stocks and how long they’re expected to last.

UI Redesign: When the basic necessities are in place, the very placeholder programmer UI will be replaced with something a bit nicer.

Later Alpha features

This phase sees us adding the more advanced single player features before a relatively “feature complete” Beta release.

Other biomes: New and interesting locations to found your settlement rather than faux-European woodland.

Endgame progression: While this isn’t well defined at this point, we definitely want to add a bunch of gameplay features and “soft goals” for players to aim towards without compromising the sandbox style experience of the game.

Noble progression: As your settlement amasses greater and greater prestige, you’ll attract increasingly powerful nobles, from counts and dukes all the way up to the king of your civilisation, truly letting you become “King under the Mountain”.

Bards and musicians: Sometimes a travelling minstrel may stop at your settlement and play some songs for their keep, or perhaps one of your residents will take up an instrument (possibly a noble) and play to entertain your other settlers. All in all, it’s a glimmer of rest and relaxation in a world of work and danger, boosting the morale and happiness of your population.

Kickstarter animal choice fulfilment: One of the backer rewards from the Kickstarter campaign allows backers to pick a real-world animal which will be implemented into the game, and by this stage we want to get them all in-game!

Kickstarter “Design a recipe for food or drink” fulfilment: Now that most of the potential edible ingredients are in the game, Kickstarter backers can choose from among them for new food and drink recipes.

Play as orcs: Differing wildly from a dwarven settlement, players can take control of an orcish tribe which has its own mechanics and gameplay concepts. Orcs are always on the lookout for a good fight, and if they haven’t attacked anything for a while, are liable to turn on each other! This can be mitigated by building combat arenas to pit combatants against each other which orcs love to watch and cheer on. Even better if it involves some captured prisoners!

Play as humans: Whereas in most fantasy settings humans are the default or “average” race, in King under the Mountain they are ruthlessly capitalist narcissists, who will only work on a job if they’re being paid to do it. Unlike the comparatively socialist dwarven communities, managing a human settlement involves actually paying for jobs and time, in a manner a little like the Majesty series of games.

Nemesis System: Inspired by Shadow of Mordor, your settlement may be terrorised by a recurring villain character who will be a constant thorn in your side until you deal with them permanently, which may be trickier than it sounds.

Family, friends and rivalries: The basis for relationships between settlers and the impact that may have on their thoughts and behaviour.

Speech and thought bubbles: Help bring your settlers more to life by visualising their thoughts and conversations.

Clans and politics: Greatly fleshing out the relationships between characters in a settlement, your population will belong to one of several clans which may have their own goals and desires differing from each other. Poor management could live to a civil war!

Hidden cults: Along the same lines, your settlers may be subverted to a secret cult which needs to be rooted out and exposed before it endangers the whole population. Might end up also including religion as a wider feature.

Diseases and contagions: It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye (to a horrible wasting disease)

Alchemy and potions: While dwarves tend not to dabble in alchemy, humans and some orcs have been known to brew potions with varying results.

Magic system: Also where dwarves don’t use magic, humans and orcs both do, and having a magic user in your settlement can bring both powerful benefits and dangerous risks. You can read about the in-world design of the magic system here.

Demonic invasion: The biggest risk of magic is that continued use attracts demons who can invade reality from their own plane of existence. As some of the most dangerous creatures in the world this risk is not to be underestimated!

Legendary weapons and items: To support some part of Kickstarter backer fulfilment, sometimes crafters will be inspired to create a legendary item of immense worth which may have its own special abilities and/or backstory.

Kickstarter “Design a legendary treasure” fulfilment: Following the above, the relevant backers will be surveyed to design the legendary treasure they would like adding to the game.

Kickstarter/Patreon background lore fulfilment: This feature is wide-ranging in scope, to fulfil the “Yourself or a creation of yours will feature in the lore and background of the game world” reward offered as part of the Kickstarter and Patreon.

Books and knowledge: Finally a use for nobles – authoring books and recording knowledge. Of particular importance to wizards and other magic users who can greatly increase their power by learning from the experiments of a more experienced caster.

Spellcrafting: Following on from amassing magical knowledge, actually building that knowledge comes through spellcrafting – experimenting and trying out new spells to see what works and what doesn’t, possibly with comical unintended effects.

Mythical beasts: In the forgotten corners of the world there are still mythical beasts and monsters, ready to be discovered by an unsuspecting miner, or for them to come across the settlement by themselves!

Kickstarter design a race backer fulfilment: One of the highest tiers of the Kickstarter campaign allows backers to design a non-playable race to inhabit the world of King under the Mountain, and by this point in time we should have them all in-game.

Beta releases

Although there’s a lot of different definitions as to what a beta release actually is, we’re defining it as having a relatively full feature set (though the game will doubtlessly keep expanding) to turn attention to the unique asynchronous multiplayer of King under the Mountain. We’ll have considered the core game experience of building and managing a settlement to be mostly complete, turning an eye to the bigger, more ambitious features which will distinguish us from other games in the genre.

Asynchronous multiplayer adventures: The flagship feature that we’re building towards is not just being limited to your own settlement, but potentially all those of other players too! In gameplay terms, this will mean putting together a small team of adventurers, usually the best and most distinguished of your military, to be sent off on an “adventure” to another location. What we’re working towards is that these other locations will be a copy of another player’s settlement, probably belonging to a different race (e.g. sending a band of orcs to raid a dwarven fortress), with the goal of taking loot and resources from the enemy settlement. The player of that settlement won’t actually lose anything – this is just a copy stored on a central server to act as a piece of player-driven content to provide much more varied and interesting locations than could be created through procedural generation techniques. It’s best described as something like a dungeon crawl with a party of heroes from an RPG, but with the characters that you’ve built and nurtured from your own settlement.

Turn-based combat system: While simple exploration of other player’s creations is all well and good, to really bring things to life most adventures will involve combat with the defending guards and other characters, playing out in a turn-based tactical battle inspired by XCOM, Fire Emblem and even Blood Bowl. The size and shape of rooms and corridors will have different tactical considerations – a narrow corridor may only allow for one or two characters to progress at a time, while a large, open hall will mean relative positioning in a battle becomes a focus. The hope is that these considerations will make designing and building your own settlement even more interesting as you plan for how it might best be defended from other players.

Reclaim a settlement: Lost a settlement to invasion (demonic or otherwise)? Itching for another chance at the same map, if only you’d done things just a little differently? With this feature, you can reclaim a settlement you’ve lost by sending a hardy band of adventurers to clear out the hostile invaders and bring it back under your control (going from a turn-based combat adventure back into normal play).

New game plus: Accomplished everything you set out to do with your current settlement and looking for a new challenge? Rather than starting again fresh with the normal starting set of characters and resources, send a section of your current population along with caravans loaded with goods and supplies to found a new city in style. There’s a whole world out there to explore!

Conquer your enemies: Not content with starting a new settlement from scratch again? Put together the largest, meanest military you can and take over that enemy settlement that’s been attacking you. Then, have the option of switching to your new location permanently with a group of optimistic emigrants.

Version 1.0

By no means the end of development, but by this point we think the game can officially lose the “early access” tag and stand as a fully complete game. This phase of development looks to build out the more social aspects of the “multiplayer” side of the game to bring the player-base together.

Rating of adventures: Have you just had an adventure to a particularly interesting or well designed settlement built by another player? Rate it up so that others can do the same! Participation in this feature will likely involve some cosmetic rewards for players who consistently vote or are voted up themselves.

Friend features: Exploring another player’s settlement doesn’t have to be all about combat and loot. Invite your friends to explore and share your creations.

Version 2.0 and beyond

Having implemented everything we kept in scope for version 1.0, this part of the lifecycle will become large expansions that add new and wildly different modes of play or factions to play as. While these may possibly end up as paid DLC, we’ll be sure to make them free for any players who backed the game at Kickstarter or supported us during the Alpha phase. Most likely we’ll follow the Paradox model of a paid expansion (their larger ones) which add new factions and playable races, alongside a major free update which adds the related features and systems for all players.

Play as a lone wizard: Rather than controlling the actions of an entire city’s population, you play as a lone wizard, exiled from the rest of their race due to the dangers of magic. Build your lair with the help of crafted golems and magical familiars. Lay traps and dangers for foolish adventurers seeking your riches. Amass the most magical knowledge and experience on your way to becoming the most powerful wizard in the world!

Play as a necromancer: Or alternatively, plan to live forever through the dark magic of undeath. Raise undead legions to do your bidding and silence your enemies. Become an immortal, all-powerful sorceror on your way to world domination!

Play as a dragon: Amass your hoard of gold and gems to increase your power as your kobold minions follow your orders. Strike fear into the hearts of settlers attempting to live within your domain!

Out of scope

This list is already well beyond the realms of feature creep but there’s a few things we know we won’t be doing.

3D maps or “Z-levels”: See here and here for a detailed breakdown on the discussion and final decision regarding Z-levels or multiple layers to maps.

Direct multiplayer: Adding a direct face-to-face multiplayer combat mode would massively increase the scope and cost of the project and just won’t be feasible to build into the engine at a later stage. Potentially you might see something like this in a more-multiplayer focused spin-off or sequel if we’re massively successful (read: extremely doubtful, but never say never). That said, don’t forget there’ll be asynchronous multiplayer such as exploring and raiding other players’ settlements.