King Art Games made a lot of headway in 2019 with their alternate history World War I game, Iron Harvest. They managed to secure a publishing deal with Deep Silver, although hopefully this doesn’t mean any kind of Epic Games Store exclusivity. They finished up a lot of the core gameplay mechanics, the character models and assets, as well as multiplayer functionality and all new maps, units and many of the heroes for the campaign mode. A new trailer recapping everything they’ve completed in 2019 doesn’t just scour the accomplishments of the recent past, it also looks forward toward the future and what they have in store leading up to the game’s release on September 1st, 2020.

The next major goal that they have on the table is working on and completing the cinematics. They’re actually doing things opposite of how most AAA studios design games where they have a separate big-budget CGI outfit to come in and make some impressive cinematics that they can pitch during promotional videos and to garner extra financing from investors. Instead they decided to work on the core gameplay, structure out the three separate campaign modes, and then finish the cinematics last.

You can check out the 2019 recap trailer below.

Much of the work now is on finalizing gameplay loops, adding in tertiary mechanics such as retreating, and balance improvements during multiplayer PvP, as well as finishing up the third playable faction during the campaign mode.

Each of the factions will have three playable heroes that you can utilize on the battlefield as well, and they’re being implemented along with the campaign maps.

Gamers who backed the game during its Kickstarter run have been able to play-test some of these features with the alpha-backer releases that King Art Games have been releasing.

Another big hurdle that they’re ironing out for Iron Harvest’s release is the pathfinding for the AI. This can very well make or break the presentation of big battle sequences that play out in real-time. Proper pathfinding helps both player-controlled units and enemy CPU units to navigate the maps both effectively and realistically. Poor AI pathfinding is oftentimes a huge drawback to many games out there where the challenge seems gaunt because ethe AI gets stuck on debris, lodged into some part of the geometry, or fails to utilize the map to its full advantage.

So far everything about Iron Harvest looks good. I am quite leery about having a female protagonist at the forefront of the game’s promotional material (though props to them for making her a redhead). The last thing we need is more lectures about women being front-line leaders in world wars. We all know how well that didn’t work out for Battlefield V. If she’s just a small part of a much larger and more menacing war effort then I might be willing to overlook it.

Oh, and I’m also leery about the game’s potential glorification of Communism. Let’s hope King Art doesn’t take any incentives to tread down that path.

But yeah, otherwise Iron Harvest looks good and you can look for it to release on the Xbox One, PS4 and on PC starting September 1st, 2020 later this year.