Monthly dev update for King under the Mountain - a simulation-based strategy game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, The Settlers and Prison Architect.

Posted by RocketJumpTechnology on Dec 17th, 2018

Welcome to the December update for King under the Mountain! Plenty of progress this month, again thanks to the funding from Kickstarter, so thank you to all of you who backed the game!

First up is that in addition to the frequently mentioned "make soup" from the trailer, the dwarves have figured out how to make bread now. Wheat needs to be sown, tended and harvested, then milled into flour before being prepared as dough and cooked using a bread oven to create loaves of bread. There's more work for your settlers to do in this longer production chain than cooking vegetables into soup, but there's a big payoff in that wheat crops made into bread is more efficient in terms of food produced per crop tile. The loaves are then served up in a feasting hall in the same way that soup is from a cauldron. Here's a video of it in action:

The flour mill is a new kind of furniture which requires components to be produced first (the millstone itself) by a stonemason, bringing together the different production chains in a functioning settlement. You can expect to see more of this in the future as the majority of furniture and crafting tables currently implemented are something of a placeholder.

Along with needing to eat, your settlers now need to quench their thirst or risk getting so dehydrated that they die of it! With nothing else available, they'll have to walk over to the river and drink from it directly like some kind of animal (which makes them a little upset as you can imagine), so now you'll want to set up some water barrels around your settlement to keep everyone happy and hydrated. This will still require a dwarf to head over to the river to fill the barrel up every so often, but it's far less intensive than *everyone* having to go to the river regularly so it's one of the first things you'll want to get set up. In the future, the wonders of dwarven engineering will provide flowing water to the settlement though underground pipes, but for now they'll have to do it by hand.

Following on from mentioning the unhappiness from drinking from the river, the first stages of the happiness system have been implemented too!

The current settler inspection window



Dwarves will get upset at sleeping outside and on the ground, so players finally have a good reason to carve nice bedrooms out underground (or indoors when you can build roofing, shortly). Dwarves are quite picky so will still be a little bit upset at sharing a bedroom with others so you might want to cater to their every whim by giving everyone a private bedroom. Fortunately, every new settler has a long-lasting happiness bonus at the optimism of starting their new life - you'll want to make sure they have a comfortable place to live and work before too long!

Sound effects are finally being added to the game, although this is only in the first stages so it is a bit too early to show this off just yet. Button clicks and other UI sounds are in, and I'm working with Jordan Chin, the talented composer, to come up with fitting sounds for the vast majority of the things that can currently happen in-game. It's been a bit weird to have the game world completely silent (other than background music) up to this point, and I'm sure having sounds in the game is really going to bring it to life in a very big way!

Finally, immigration has been added, so early each year (after the first) a number of new settlers will join your burgeoning town. They come with their own supplies of seeds for new crops (though you'll have to work quickly to get them planted in spring) and rations to avoid a food crisis, but if your pantry is particular well stocked you can expect even more to arrive. This is going to need a lot of balancing to get right so expect both of those points to change in the future. It's worth re-iterating that the game's current UI is very much a placeholder, and as part of that there's now a notification system to tell you about important events like the new immigrants arriving:

That brings us up to the present where I'm currently working on map exploration or a "fog of war" (although not a dynamic one) which means you'll have to mine into the mountainside to see what's there, with the potential to uncover underground caverns that you weren't previously aware of. In the future these will often contain useful plants (mushrooms) or dangerous foes, though for now they'll probably just act as a way of uncovering more of the underground area more quickly.

Past that there's many more things to work on but it's going to depend on the order that the new art assets are finished off in so I can't quite say for sure other than they should all be quite interesting and add more depth to the game!

If you backed the Kickstarter or are a Patreon backer, this is your LAST CHANCE to complete (or modify) your backerkit survey (which can be retrieved from kingunderthemountain.backerkit.com) as they will be locked at the end of December. If you've selected any add-ons in Backerkit or placed a pre-order then cards are due to be charged mid-January. To clarify - Kickstarter pledges have already been collected but if you added anything on BackerKit and had to enter credit card details, these haven't been charged yet as Backerkit prefer project creators to not charge cards until less than 30 days before rewards are due to be sent out (so that refunds for incorrect orders can be applied in the 30 day window). This means they'll be charged in mid-January as the plan is to release the first alpha in mid-February! If your card being charged in mid-January is going to be a problem for you, please contact me at ross@kingunderthemounta.in using the email address associated to your Backerkit/Kickstarter account and I'll see what I can do to help.

It's the end of 2018 (it's been a great year for King under the Mountain!) and IndieDB have launched their annual Indie of the Year awards. Incredibly flatteringly, King under the Mountain has been chosen in the top 100 for 2018, so I'd massively appreciate any votes in the awards by going to indiedb.com/groups/2018-indie-of-the-year-awards/top100 and voting for King under the Mountain under "Real Time Strategy" in "Upcoming Games". Thank you and have a great holiday season!