Recently revealed game Kingmakers seems to perfectly capture the childhood thrill of smashing together characters from different worlds, with its debut trailer featuring a huge medieval army being demolished by a modern soldier with automatic weapons, a beat-up pick-up truck and command of a helicopter. Beyond that now-infamous plot twist at the 23 second mark, there's a lot going on: third-person shooter gameplay, real-time strategy elements and a massive scale to the proceedings with thousands of soldiers on-screen; it's like dropping a guy from Battlefield into Medieval: Total War.

The developers behind the title are Redemption Road Games, best known for the Road Rash spiritual successor Road Redemption that featured in our retrospective of that iconic series. Following that piece's publication late last year, the development team reached out to offer an interview about what they were working on next.

Here's that interview, which features John Linneman speaking to four members of Road Redemption Games: co-founders and programmers Ian Fisch, Paul Fisch and Daniel Balazs, and programmer Trace Myers. As usual, the text has been lightly edited for length and clarity, with the full interview available via the video embed below.

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Kingmakers was announced just a little over two weeks ago, but all of IGN’s audience metric data suggests that it might soon follow Palworld and Helldivers 2 as a huge breakout sensation.

So why do we think it's about to blow up?

• With nearly 11M views across IGN's …

Hello. One of my favourite pieces of writing about games, not that anybody asked, is from Sid Meier. It's the fourth, I think, of his 10 rules for game design. The first rules have laid out the scene: choose a topic you have passion for, define your axioms, refine your axioms. All good stuff. And then, suddenly:

Double it or cut it in half.

This is what really good film cuts are made for. We have moved from the theoretical to the densely practical. We were at the blackboard, we were pontificating, and now we're right in it, locked in the kitchen, spaghetti sauce everywhere, and we're trying to turn things around before the cooker explodes. Double it. Or cut it in half. This moment calls for big things, not small things. This moment counts.

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Ever wondered what would really happen if you could play a game where you'd be isekai’d into medieval times, where riding horses, using bows and arrows, and wielding swords were crucial in battles, but you had modern weapons and tools with you?

What would happen if you were to run …

Kingmakers has too much going on to easily summarise, but I'll try. Really, though, you should just click below and watch the trailer, which will surprise and delight you with its twists and scope in a way my words will not.

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Steam game Kingmakers' first full trailer just released, and it's one for the history books. Well, we say that, but the zany twist in the footage indicates that the game's medieval slant isn't quite as historically accurate as it first appears.