King Arthur’s Gold is a frenzied multiplayer game with room for up to 32-players at once. It’s filled with castles, war and blood, a true medieval fight to the death – there’s even a fan comic. I was luckily enough to speak to Michal Marcinkowski and Max about their manic medieval game.
Could you tell me your role in the development?
Max: I produce all the pixel art, do around half of the programming and keep up a lot of the community relations.
Michal Marcinkowski: I do everything else!
Who else is involved in the development?
Max: We have a support guy, Lucas, who helps people troubleshoot; helps handle refunds, and so on. We also have Ryan and Joe our system admins, and Tom, who helps interface the game with complicated backend stuff and is working on a mod distribution system. We’ve had people drop in and out over the years too.
MM: We are more like a collective of talented people working on cool things than a proper company. Usually it’s people from the community. Recently we had Kyle do voice-over for the trailer, Sebastian make music for the trailer, Bartek redo the website and so on.
How long was your game in development, and will you continue to update it?
Max: We’re on build 939 now, which means 939 days in development, over two and a half years!
What is King Arthur’s Gold?
MM: KAG is a multiplayer death match game played with up to 32 players. You can build castles and wage war on the enemy team as a Knight, Archer or Builder in a fully destructible medieval world. If you’re asking about what’s the Gold – it’s used in the games economy.
Could you explain the mechanics in some more detail?
MM: The game draws inspiration from Quake and Soldat (which I made) in its mechanical controls and death match aspect. You’ll need to be quick and agile, draw your sword fast, fire the arrows accurately and so on. You’ll also need to strategize and collaborate with your team to build effective defences and lead winning sieges over the enemies castles.
Could you explain the story in more detail?
Max: There isn’t really an overarching story to speak of, though there is a short, funny campaign where you save me from an evil wizard.
MM: The story is left to your imagination. King Arthur is behind the scenes and the war revolves around his mythical gold. The rest is left to your imagination.
What inspired the decision to make King Arthur’s Gold?
MM: I played Ace of Spades and understood that building plus fighting is the ultimate multiplayer game. Other than that I needed money quickly because I’m 100% indie and have no other source of income.
If you were going to compare your game to 3 others, what would they be?
Max: King Arthur’s World, Worms, and Quake.
MM: Lost Vikings, Soldat, Quake 2
Were there any significant hurdles you hand to jump over to get here? Was there ever a day when you thought it wasn’t going to happen?
Max: We reached a point about one year in when the engine code was getting so tangled that we found it nearly impossible to work with – we would change code in one place and it would have unexpected consequences elsewhere. Michal and I rewrote the majority of the engine and moved all the game code to scripts. It was a massive task, and completely changed the game. Luckily, we feel it changed it for the better, and the “scripted everything” aspect of the engine makes modding very powerful.
MM: I feel like that every Friday when the week is coming to an end.
Any last words?
MM: Play the game! It’s something you have never ever experienced before. Trust me.
You can buy King Arthur’s Gold from the website, Steam and Desura.
I wish Max and Michal the best of luck with King Arthur’s Gold.
