Some may look at an early clip of Kingmakers and think they already know what to expect: tactical battles in which you command medieval armies across sweeping battlefields. And that’s partially true. But this new title by Redemption Road Games features an unexpected and absolutely absurd twist.

We’ll let the trailer speak for itself.

In Kingmakers, you control a soldier from a dying world in the future. To save your present, you must travel 500 years in the past to medieval England to change the course of a war to prevent a later apocalypse.

Since the protagonist evidently has no regard for blending in, he arrives fully strapped with modern weaponry such as assault rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and even helicopters to blow these knights back to Camelot. You’ll command your own medieval army, with gameplay seamlessly switching between zoomed-out RTS-style view to issue commands to various units and more action-focused third-person shooting.  

Redemption Road Games states Kingmaker’s armies are fully simulated by a next-generation multithreaded A.I. This allows them to execute advanced pathfinding, decision-making, and even a loyalty system, with a procedurally generated animation system helping bring the mobs to life. Kingmakers also feature co-op with up to three other players. Each ally commands their own army to work together to topple enemy fortresses or defend friendly strongholds. 

Redemption Road Games states in an X post that it has been working on Kingmakers for the last five years. It looks wild and is certainly a refreshing concept. Hopefully, it’s as fun as it looks, and we'll find out when it launches to PC via Steam sometime this year.