https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingartgames/iron-harvestEDIT: Updated post to mention all stretch goals were met (100% of $1.5M funded)
A classic real-time strategy game with an epic single player campaign, multiplayer & coop, set in the alternate reality of 1920+
$856,247 pledged of $450,000
10,918 backers
16 days to go
We asked thousands of RTS fans what they actually want from a modern RTS and came up with a game that favors clever tactics over action, player freedom over scripted set-piece moments and strong singleplayer campaigns over long-term monetization opportunities.
Join us to make the next great Realtime-Strategy Game a reality!
Updates
Update #1 - Multiplayer, Windows 7 & New Reward Tiers
Update #2 - Funding Goal Reached!
Update #3 - Annotated Gameplay Video; PayPal Shop
Update #4 - [For backers only] Link to Private Discord Channel
Update #5 - Road to Alpha 1; Discord Channel for Backers
Update #6 - What Is Everybody Doing & All Singleplayer Stretch Goals Reached!
Update #7 - Race to Multiplayer; New Reward Tiers; (Including PayPal payments)
Depending on the results of this Kickstarter, the game will feature:
Three playable factions with over 40 unit types and 9 heroes
Three singleplayer campaigns with an overarching story (21 missions)
Singleplayer & Co-op skirmish matches
Singleplayer & Co-op challenge maps
Competitive multiplayer (ranked matches, seasons)
Free DLC & Updates
Iron Harvest gives you time to come up with a plan and allows for a wide range of tactics, including stealth.
Almost everything in the game is destructible – if the weapon is powerful enough. So no cover lasts forever and the line of sight changes constantly.
A mature story told from the perspective of the three different factions. Each faction has three playable hero characters that offer additional options in combat and reconnaissance.
Lead dozens of different unit types into battle. Soldiers can equip weapons on the battlefield to gain special abilities and more firepower.
Build your base and add fortification to protect your unit production and research.
As a Kickstarter backer, you have the opportunity to get all of this in our Exclusive Kickstarter Edition:
Iron Harvest takes place in the World of 1920+. It is an alternate version of our own world created by Polish artist Jakub Różalski. In the early 20th century, tradition clashes with progress, and the world is still full of mysteries and secrets.
Humankind, fascinated by technology, iron, and engines, invented powerful walking machines, that proved to be mighty weapons on the battlefields of the Great War and are now part of everyday life.
Now, a few years after the Great War, secret forces are working towards the destabilization of Europe, determined to set the world on fire and seize control.
Factions
There are three playable factions in the game, each with over a dozen individual units and three playable heroes.
The Saxony Empire is one of the most influential countries in Europe, with powerful industry, developed cities, modern factories and a strong military tradition. After the unfavorable conditions of surrender in the Great War, the current mood in the Empire is bad, and proud elites and humiliated aristocrats secretly oppose the Emperor’s appeasement policies.
The Polania Republic is a large agricultural country with a long history. It is trying to maintain its status and territory, struggling with its aggressive neighbors: The Saxony Empire in the west and Rusviet in the east. Polania initiated a program to modernize its army while a large part of the country is still occupied by Rusviet forces.
Rusviet is huge, powerful, and has unmatched industrial and population potential. However, the country is tired and worn out by the long war. People are frustrated, and the power of Tsar Nikolaj weakens. Mysterious Grigori Rasputin has become an extraordinarily powerful man and revolution is in the air...
Heroes & Units
Iron Harvest features three singleplayer campaigns with one over-arching story. In the story, you switch sides from Polania to Rusviet to Saxony.
In each campaign, you follow the story of one main character, who is joined by two other heroes. Heroes in Iron Harvest are not unstoppable “super units”, but units with special abilities, that give you additional options in combat. You can play all nine heroes in multiplayer and skirmish matches as well.
Here are the first three heroes (from left to right). Anna, a Polania girl, who becomes a capable sniper and a symbol of the resistance, Gunter, an experienced warrior and legendary commander, and Olga, a Rusviet spy who operates in the shadows and is close to the Tzar.
Some heroes have pets they can control in battle, like Anna’s bear Wojtek, Gunter’s dire wolves Tag and Nacht or Olga’s tiger Changa. Others have unique mechs or weapons to their disposal.
Infantry units are the most versatile units in the game. They can equip different weapons and tools to get new abilities or to change the type of damage they deal. A standard infantry with a rifle cannot harm a mech, but the very same infantry squad could find grenades, mines or a hand cannons on the battlefield to change that...
Infantry units can also man weapon systems like heavy MGs, cannons and mortars.
Relationship to the board game "Scythe"
"Scythe" is an awesome board game by Stonemaier Games, taking place in the same world. The gameplay is totally different. Iron Harvest is not a digital version of Scythe or anything like that, they are two different games by different companies, taking place in the same world, based on the artworks by Jakub Różalski.
Up to this point we paid for the Iron Harvest development with money we made with our previous games. But we need your help to stay independent and make the game as good and as big as we all want it to be. These are our funding goals for the Iron Harvest Kickstarter campaign and the goal is to reach all of them.
This is the base game with all the units, features and tech described above, including the full ~20 hours singleplayer campaign, the base-building, the destructable environments, the heroes and so on.
$500,000 - New Game Plus - After you finished the campaign, “New Game Plus” gives you the opportunity to play it again with new challenges and rewards, increasing the total play time significantly.
$600,000 - Cinematic Cutscenes - We put a lot of effort into the quality of the campaign story and we want to present it in the best way possible, which is in-game cinematics between missions.
$750,000 - Single Player Challenge Maps - A collection of maps for experienced commanders with specific tasks to solve. Each map has its own “hook” and the goal is to master each one of them.
$850,000 - Skirmish Mode - A single player mode that lets you fight against the AI. Since you make the rules and there are almost infinite ways to play, this is the mode you can play forever.
At this stage, the game will feature competitive multiplayer maps you can play against other players all over the world.
$1,100,000 - Co-op Campaign - You can play the whole singleplayer campaign with a friend, controlling the same units. So you can divide your units into two combat groups or one player plays the offense while the other manages defense and production.
$1,150,000 - Co-op Challenges - A couple of challenge maps especially designed for co-op. Think coordinated attacks on enemy bases or “stay alive until your co-op partner reaches you.”
$1,200,000 - Ladder & Seasons - We will have ranked multiplayer and seasons. You can unlock skins, gain medals and fight for the top position in your region.
We won’t add new features to the base game, even if the Kickstarter is very successful. It is very dangerous to make a game bigger and bigger, just because you can. Instead, we’ll release the base game as planned and add a free mini DLC campaign later on. Think “Company of Heroes - Tiger Ace”.
Timeline
We will keep all backers up to date about development progress via a development blog and regular updates here on Kickstarter. Our goal is to get work-in-progress versions of the game into your hands as soon as possible to get your feedback. Here is the plan:
This means, if the Alpha-Version is part of your reward, you will be able to play for the first time in a couple of months. Most likely, the Alpha- and Beta-Versions will get some updates, so there will be new content between the big updates.
Alpha1 is going to be a very early singleplayer test version that‘s all about the basics: Controls, UI, basic gameplay, main units, performance/compatibility and so on.
Alpha2 will focus on multiplayer (if we reach the stretch-goal) and enables you to play against other backers for the first time.
Beta: First look at all the game modes, including first single player campaign missions.
This is our fourth Kickstarter, and hopefully the fourth successful one. We got infected with the crowdfunding bug in 2014, when a dedicated community of gamers enabled us to make Battle Worlds: Kronos, a turn-based strategy game.
Our next two crowdfunded productions, the point-and-click adventure The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 and the RPG/RTS mix The Dwarves have been great experiences as well.
We believe one of our biggest strengths is that the team worked together for years on multiple games. We will make Iron Harvest the RTS we’re all waiting for.
We are a very international team. Our office is in Bremen, Germany. Jakub works from his home in southern Poland, our external artists live all over the world - as does our community.
Why Kickstarter?
We want our games to be LOVED by our fans. So we ask you guys what you actually want from a modern RTS and, unsurprisingly, many of the over 15,000 gamers that took part in our great RTS survey want something different from what the big mainstream publishers offer.
Here are the results of our survey:
www.kingart-games.com/rts_surveyWe want to work with our community and get as much feedback as early as possible to make the RTS that fans actually want. We need to keep full creative control over Iron Harvest to do that. Your support here on Kickstarter enables us either to finance the full development by ourselves or to negotiate a publisher deal on our terms. In both cases we can make the RTS of our dreams.
Budget
The development of an ambitious game like Iron Harvest takes a lot of time and is expensive. On average, there will be around 25 people working on the game. The total development costs will be over $5,2 million.
We already invested over $1 million up to this point. We hope to make enough money with this Kickstarter to be able to find publishing- and distribution partners on our terms and conditions. Or – in the best case – to crowdfund the whole project.
Platforms
We are developing Iron Harvest for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Please note: The Kickstarter Alpha & Beta versions will ONLY be available for Windows via Steam. We cannot just upload work-in-progress versions to Sony or Microsoft servers.
If you back a console version, you’ll get a PC key for the Alpha and Beta versions and a console key at release.
Windows version means Windows version; console versions mean console versions - There are concerns in the community, developing console versions in parallel might lead to compromises for the Windows version. We understand where these concerns are coming from. But in case of Iron Harvest, they are not warranted.
Both versions of the game will get a totally independent control scheme and user interface. So no decision made on the console side has an influence on the Windows controls or UI.
We already did tests regarding controller inputs and we think we found a solution that’s better than anything out there. This control-scheme works just fine with the gameplay we've designed for PC.
And even if we'd have to change something for consoles, we'd not be looking for the smallest common denominator. Instead we would adjust gameplay for consoles without changing it for Windows.
The console version is very important for us. We believe there is a hunger for great RTS games on consoles since there are so few. Moreover, making the game multi-platform leads to more interest in the game when it comes to the media and publishers, which helps everybody.
What about Nintendo Switch? – There are huge Switch-fans in the company but the probability of Iron Harvest coming to the Switch is slim due to technical limitations.
And what about Linux and Mac versions? – We released most of our games for Linux and Mac. Nevertheless, at this point, we do not want to promise something we might not be able to deliver. On the technology side, Iron Harvest is much more complex than our other games, for example because of the multiplayer features. Therefore, we are going to evaluate Linux/Mac versions at a later point in time.
One of the best things about Kickstarter is giving you guys the opportunity to get supercool editions of the game that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Risks and challenges
Our team has been successfully developing and releasing video games for years, so we expect to be able to complete a Kickstarter project again! However, video game productions are always a big challenge for all team members and circumstances may affect the development process. Most relevant risks for Iron Harvest are:
- We might be late (due to illness or change of the team or content);
- Certain features of the game that we are planning on now might be changed (or even cut) as we move ahead with development;
- Obtaining the rest budget might fail (see above, “Budget”);
- Financial or legal troubles might impede successful development;
- There might be technical problems or unforeseen changes on consoles or with our middleware.
Legal
German law shall apply to the exclusion of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for International Sale of Goods.
