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Hello there itch.io traveler,

What you see here is an extremely early prototype of our game that we used during the Kynseed Kickstarter. We've been fortunate enough to have had a successful campaign and so over the past number of months we've been developing this humble prototype into a full game. Much of this prototype's content is now very outdated (particularly character art and animations!), so take everything with a grain of wheat...erm, salt.

If you'd like to join us on this game dev adventure, then check out the links listed above and come hang out with us. We've also got a late backer program for anyone who missed the Kickstarter but still wants access to the rewards and other goodies. Many thanks to all of you who have downloaded this early chapter of Kynseed's development story - over 10,000 of you at last count! We look forward to continuing along this journey with you all.

Love,

PixelCount

















Kynseed is a 2D sandbox adventure from veterans of Lionhead Studios' Fable series. Drawing from years of experience crafting the iconic Fable titles, we aim to deliver an all-new quirky RPG filled to the brim with mystery, exploration, awful puns, and sandbox possibilities.



While invoking the spirit of past Fable games, Kynseed is infused with our own ideas and a mix of British folklore, ancient legend, and rustic traditions. We hope to capture these inspirations in an atmospheric world with whimsy, humour, and eccentricity, and not a single orc or high elf in sight.

Spend your days adventuring, farming the land while raising your family, or even running your own tavern, apothecary, blacksmiths or goods store.

Every person and domestic animal you meet remembers what you do, or fail to do.

You can step off The Path into the darker areas of Quill and encounter faery tale monsters and enticing mysteries.

The seasons will pass and living things will grow old and die. Faces from the past are replaced by the fresh young faces of new life.

You have grown up in your parent's idyllic farm in The Vale, a peaceful valley in the faery tale land of Quill. In time, you meet the mysterious Mr Fairweather, who offers you a mystical acorn called the Kynseed. Once planted, it will grow a magical family tree.

But such a gift does not come without a price. And when you die of old age yourself, you will pass your family tree's Kynseed on to your children so that they may continue your bloodline and shape their own legacy.

Will your name be carved on the walls of history or scrawled on the walls of the pub outhouse?

















The following features are to be added over the course of development and are not necessarily present in this prototype. Follow Kynseed's full development over on our community forums or Discord.

An Aging World

The land is affected by your choices and deeds. Seasons come and go and affect the world both visually and in gameplay.

Living Things Have Memory and Grow Old

Individuals and animals grow old and eventually die. Families remember your good deeds or wrongdoings for generations.

Unique Life Mechanic

Pay the mysterious Mr Fairweather for powerful upgrades and revivals, at the cost of years from your life! Will you miss out on your child's development to buy that music box that makes dragons dance? Will your business suffer because you bought a pet cat that turns people to stone?





Real-time Combat

Wander from The Path and indulge in meaty combat against various nasty faery tale creatures that guard the materials and loot you need to become the greatest in the land.

Meaningful Relationship System

Build friendship into romance and produce heirs to continue your legacy. Do favours for others and not only gain friendship but also juicy information and gifts.





Event Calendar

A calendar keeps you up to date of festivals and events. Learn where and when the best ingredients grow. Attend various competitions, annual fayres, and don't you dare be late for a date!

Monsters and Creatures

They're more than just sword fodder. Each creature has a sim and their own traits that you can take advantage of. Remember, even dragons need to go to the bathroom now and then. (That wasn't a pile of gold that Smaug sat on!)

Run Your Business

Own a tavern and craft beers with bizarre effects. Be a blacksmith and forge weapons and tools to order. Manage your apothecary and mix cures for a variety of bizarre poxes and curses.

A Land Where Superstitions Are True

Heed the advice of the Old Fishwife and the locals to find out everything from where the rarest items can be found to where and when the best places to conceive are! We're not just a little stitious. We're super stitious.

Olde Traditions

Every village has their own customs and quirks. Visit the annual cheese bowling rite and encounter Wiki Men, Fred Barleycorn and wear the Trousers of Fertility, as passed down through generations. (I really hope they wash them...)

Recipes

Hunger dictates combat prowess so a proper breakfast before some monster slaying goes a long way. Discover and use proper recipes though, and you can take your fighting to the next level, or even use the Traits in food to distract, weaken or even scare away enemies!

Item Traits

All items and materials, have unique traits. From medicinal to hallucinogenic, shrinking to fattening...Want to feed laxatives to herds of sheep and lead them through town? The creative possibilities for fun are endless.





Be Friends with Animals

Domestic animals and critters have opinions of you based on your actions. If they like you enough they may just let you ride them!

Lovely Music

No mythical world would be complete without music to go with it. The title music has been made by Russell Shaw but also helping us out with some beautiful world music is Matthijs den Daas. Here's a couple of tracks you can expect to hear in our prototype. We'll be adding much more music as development continues.













KYNSEED PROTOTYPE GAMEPAD CONTROLS

(You can also access the list of controls ingame by pressing left on the D-PAD.)

Left Stick: Move player

Right Stick: Aim (slingshot, throwing, fishing rod and lantern focus)

RB: Hold to run

LEFT TRIGGER: Show info (NPC names and status, crop status, etc)

RIGHT TRIGGER: Use selected tool/item

A: Interact (hold A to interact/pick up item)

X, Y, B: Hold to bring up radial menu and left stick up/down to choose category or left/right to move selection wheel

X,Y, B: Tap to switch to the assigned tool/item (Right Trigger to use it)

D-PAD UP: Inventory

D-PAD DOWN: Tasks/Calendar

D-PAD LEFT: Show controls (this will eventually show the Skills screen)

D-PAD RIGHT: Map (the map is currently a placeholder)

START: Options









KICKSTARTER PROTOTYPE V6

This is the sixth and final prototype version used for Kickstarter campaign. (Full development has far exceeded this version!) This update is mainly a minor update to 'lock in' the prototype so that we can move on to working on the core areas of the larger game . This patch is primarily minor tweaks and improvements so if you have played previous versions you likely won't see anything new - just a slightly more refined experience for the UI, controls, and other small fixes. This also might be the last update for a fair while or perhaps even until the early access build planned for a half year from now. We want to make sure that the early access build is as good as possible and to do that we'll be giving it our complete focus. Worry not though, we'll absolutely still keep you all up to date and suitably tantalised with progress on the game as it develops via updates like these as well as over in the PixelCount community.

All music has been rebalanced and sound quality improved

A whole bunch of invisible editor work on resizing levels, moving/copying/cutting, and pasting selected game objects and tiles

Toolbar adjustments to have highlights when mouse is over something and to allow unselecting by left clicking on the current active item

Cooking has a filter option to just show ingredients for the current recipe and to show red for any you don't have of the current recipe

Intro and outro text adjusted

Bit of a tidy up on the right side of Dreamer's Nook tiles as well as removing some unused objects from the level

Fix for inventory flickering with controller (had to do with mouse overriding the position)

Mouse wheel for toolbar works better at cycling through options if there are multiple of the same item or gaps

Individual bottles and buckets are now visible in the inventory and equippable if you are lucky enough to find multiple - it shows the contents of them in the picture as well

Mouse wheel can now change tabs in the inventory/calendar screens (this is just a test - in the future we might make it more sensitive context as to what scrolls)

Gift giving wheel now has a more consistent border

Changed some messages over to use the newer warning system (the old ones are banners that fly across the top)

Query option filters to Any, Queried, To Query

Improved book presentation a little to match other menus (note it's all still placeholder that will change but making it consistent for now helps ease the process of changing it over later)

Pigs no longer show 'dead' status after they come back to life

Adjusted the position of UI elements slightly and made them configurable for future tweaking

Fixed bottom left icons so they can be mouse clickable

Insects weren't correctly cleaned up from the jar on collection

The tool pickup menu selection with mouse and keyboard are slightly improved with highlights over where the item will go and equip or close options if you want to switch immediately

Various minor UI tweaks in particular to calendar/inventory so that it is formatted a bit better and to also fix a few minor issues found

Started work on a system for internal and external feedback where you can add notes ingame - will look to show this in a dev video when it's ready

If you encounter any problems please contact us on our forums, Twitter, Facebook, or at Feedback@Kynseed.com. Thank you for playing and we hope you enjoy this rather hefty update!

















We are a team of three little pigs building a brick house to keep the wolf from the door. Two of those pigs are ex-Lionhead Studios developers and the other ran the Fable community for many years. With over 30 Years of experience developing the Fable series and its community (amongst others), we hope to infuse our games with the same charm, eccentricity and humour that permeated Lionhead's games.





Neal Whitehead

Co-Founder and Technical Director

(Twitter)

Neal has worked as a scripter, coder, and tools creator for nearly every Fable over the course of 12 years as well as a gameplay scripter on Black & White 2. He was Lionhead's 2nd best table tennis player, perhaps best shmup player, and boasts a stupidly high score on Threes. He is also a Streetfighter expert and fanboy, although he can't cope with button mashers and for a polite and quiet guy he sure swears like a sailor.





Charlton Edwards

Co-Founder and Design Director

(Twitter)

Charlie was at Lionhead longer than anyone and that's why the place smelled a bit. He cut his teeth as a tester on Black and White then Fable and ended up designing and building the Albion of both Fable 2 and Fable 3. Charlie lived for Lionhead - quite literally as he once lived there secretly for 9 days. For some reason, he is really good at the Mario Golf series despite being dreadful at real life golf...although real golf doesn't require you stopping an arrow on a power bar and trying to avoid giant mushrooms with faces.





Matt Allen

Production Manager

(Twitter, Facebook)

A rock star both on and offline, Matt helped out with the Fable community for over a decade and gained the respect of all those utter nutters. He's now part of our lovely team and when he isn't busy partying in Los Angeles he's busy editing videos, creating graphics, contributing to design, keeping us organised and on schedule, and not sleeping as much as he probably should.





ADDITIONAL SUPPORT

Russell Shaw (Twitter) for the title screen music. Legend!

Matthew Weekes (Twitter) for our utterly lovely pixel art (with animation assistance from Georgio Ser).

Matthijs den Daas (Twitter) for the amazing music.

Deborah Saez (Twitter, Website) for our current UI. Cool stuff!

Ian Faichnie for the superb Kynseed and PixelCount logos.

Mighty Mike McCarthy (Twitter) for all the stunning concept art!

And extra thanks to David Oxford and Lozz Logan (Twitter) for other fantastic art contributions.



