We’ve surpassed our goal! But let’s not stop there! Let’s add more content to Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff with our stretch goals!
As a small indie studio we wont get too overly ambitious with things like stretch goals. We wont promise things we can’t deliver. We have a number of ideas for stretch goals, but in order to manage expectations, we’re planning to reveal them one at a time as the previous goals are met.
As each goal is met we’ll reveal an in-depth look at the new feature and then reveal the next goal.
Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff is a cute, cooperative, open world video game centered around the joy of discovery. This game is a passion project that I’ve been bringing to life for over two years now. Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff is a love letter to all the game worlds I lost myself in growing up. The game is being developed with my wife and daughter in mind. We’d searched for years for a game like Swords ‘n Magic and finally I just decided that I’d have to take matters into my own hands.
The game is a casual journey of discovery. You take the role of a blank slate adventurer just waiting for their chance to carve out their destiny. With no classes, levels or restrictions, you can be whoever you want to be, use whatever weapons and items you can buy, loot or craft, and play however you wish. You can seek out epic adventures laden with legendary treasure or enjoy the simple life of owning a small farm, crafting furniture for your home or even just traveling the world as a simple merchant. In Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff you play at your own pace with no hand-holding.
Tirawyn is a high fantasy world where a good king has befallen a terrible curse and fled his throne in an attempt to save his kingdom from himself. The people of Tirawyn are in a state of panic as evil begins to lurk in all corners of the realm and novice adventurers begin to take matters into their own hands. But are they causing more trouble than they’re worth?
Watch the lore episode from the Swords ‘n Magic devlog below to learn more about the history of Tirawyn and how the world came to be.
Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff has been designed and developed live on Twitch.tv from the ground up with an audience of passionate fantasy RPG fans. This game is a tribute to this wonderful community who has supported it from its humble beginnings and because of that, fan input has always been a high priority for me. So much so that some of the in-game clothing designs and lore books were actually created by the Swords ‘n Magic community through a content submission system for our most creative fans. We plan to continue this effort, and in doing so, keep as connected as possible with fans, treating your ideas and opinions with the respect and consideration they deserve.
Join our Discord to see frequent updates about the game, share your ideas for the game and to chat with like-minded adventurers!
Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff stands out because of all the individual pieces that fit together to create a dynamic, immersive world for you to lose yourself in. While we understand the excitement of exploring dangerous lands and fighting powerful monsters, as long-time Dungeons and Dragons players, we also understand that the downtime in an adventure should be just as engaging. Which is why a lot of our features revolve around town-life and the act of owning and decorating your own home among many other non-combat gameplay features.
Our core design pillars are exploration, discovery, curiosity and growth. We use these to drive our core gameplay loop which is designed to be as follows: Players explore a new area, discover something interesting, seek out more about that new interest driven by curiosity and not a quest log with tick boxes, then return to their home to rest and evaluate the items they’ve discovered in order to progress and grow as a character and a player. Of course, we also believe that getting lost in loops within loops is a very intriguing part of open world game design, which is why we’ve not only designed specific zones to fit into this loop, but also sections of each zone and even the items within those sections. Everything is driven by discovery and curiosity, which is why it’s so important for us to create hand crafted content that’s unique and engaging for players of all ages and skill levels.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the most noteworthy features in Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff to get an idea of all there is for players to experience:
We don’t believe in hand-holding or tick boxes when it comes to questing. We’re approaching each quest as a separate adventure driven entirely by curiosity. Instead of accepting a quest from an NPC, you’ll have the opportunity to add intriguing information to your journal to keep track of information for later. Finding a book about an ancient sword forgotten by history isn’t just lore, but a treasure map in its own right. Asking around could lead you on a new epic journey to find that long lost weapon and learn about why it’s important along the way, if that’s your thing.
Many games offer multiplayer, but not many offer what Swords ‘n Magic plans to. I want to give players the best and most connected experience possible. Playing together means also being able to play apart. You aren’t tethered to your friends when playing. Explore the world at your own pace and party up when you feel like it. And when you’re ready to join another friend, take your entire character and everything they’re holding with you. No need to make a new character for every new server.
Host a game directly through Steam for up to 8 players or host a dedicated server wherever you like so you and all your friends can come and go as you please. Password protect your worlds or invite anyone and make new friends. Customize your hosted world with options that cater to how you want to experience the world.
Swords ‘n Magic is designed to sidestep a drawback my wife and I have experienced many times with multiplayer RPG’s. We hate having to start new worlds or new characters when we invite a new friend to play with us. In this game we’re doing our best to make sure that not only can a new friend join at any time, but with no level restrictions, they can join in on the fun right off the bat. You can simply share some of your higher tier gear with them, or if they’d prefer to work for it themselves, you can trade your gear out at your house for some of your weaker items and join in on their adventure as an equal.
Backing the game gets you access to exclusive Kickstarter rewards. All tiers which include game keys also include access to these rewards. When the game launches we’ll also be offering a Hero Edition, which includes even more exclusive in-game content. Because we believe that pay to win mechanics are a dark cloud over the game industry, none of our exclusive in-game rewards offer any actual gameplay advantages and are merely cosmetic.
Want to back with PayPal? No problem! Head over here to do so:
Kindred Games was founded in early 2018 by me, Michael Kocha. I started Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff as a solo project under no studio name thinking it would be a quick 3 month game project I used to learn Unreal Engine. But when I started streaming the game and began growing a small, but very dedicated fanbase, features and ideas started piling up and the game became a bigger project, eventually growing into my dream project.
This is when I began Kindred Games. I knew from the start that the studio needed to represent the passion I felt for making games with an audience and my family in mind. Kindred, which means one’s family, was such a perfect word for how I wanted to treat this project and ultimately my game studio.
Six months into development I’d built a nice little prototype of what I thought the game could feel like. I released it to many of my most dedicated fans and received loads of feedback and praise. Though I thought the game only had a couple hours of content, some of my testers racked up over a dozen hours in the project looking for every single secret and trying to find every item in the game. That’s when I knew what the core focus of the game needed to be. The joy of discovery.
I got to work learning more about Unreal Engine and taking the project more seriously. I knew the prototype was a success and that the game was going to be something worth investing my time into. I brought on a programmer (Not Moz!) to add multiplayer to the game at this time as well.
But it’s hard to make a video game while living in a hotel room for 2 months.
Shortly after we started implementing multiplayer my wife, Janna, was relocated to a state halfway across the country and I had to take 3 months off from the game. Partly because of packing and selling our house, and partly because we were stuck in a hotel room for two months before we could find somewhere to live near Janna’s work. This was a huge setback for me and the programmer. When I finally returned to the game I’d lost all motivation and ambition. After nearly 6 months of working with the programmer we still couldn’t even play the game together. Nothing was working right and all I’d done in 6 months was build half of a new zone and a single dungeon.
So I quit.
I threw in the towel and let the programmer go. This was the lowest point in the development of Swords ‘n Magic and probably in all of my game dev career. I had failed to keep the game and my passion for it alive and it really hurt watching my community slowly disappear. My streams had stopped entirely. My testers hadn’t received an update in months. Everyone knew that Swords ‘n Magic was now dead. Lost in the indie game graveyard with hundreds of thousands of other unfinished games that had real potential.
I took a few weeks off to reevaluate my goals as a gamedev. Eventually my 3 year old daughter asked me one day to play the game again and asked why I hadn’t been working. I loaded it up for her and she sat on my lap and took the gamepad. I watched her explore the world for the thousandth time as she asked me questions about who the different NPC’s were, what they were saying, why they were where they were and if she could be friends with them. She asked me questions about where she could find a better sword and how to get gold so she could buy another potion to drink. She ran away from the monsters and tried hugging all the sheep. Finally she asked if I would make a new character for her to meet. Within the hour I found myself adding more content into the game for her to play through and I knew Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff just couldn’t be over. Not yet.
The game has changed a lot. Many of the original mechanics have been reworked and now the game features fully functioning multiplayer. I’ve hired a different programmer on to help with this. I’ve also embraced the fact that I can’t make this game alone this time around. If I’m going to build a game for a growing, loving community then I would need their help in more ways than one.
Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff is being developed by a team of two developers: Me, (Michael, aka Kindred) and Moz. But we’re not the only ones contributing to the game’s success. Since I’ve been streaming the development of the game for over two years I’ve also grown a small but very dedicated and hard working mod team. Many of these wonderful people have proven to have other very useful talents in places outside moderation so they deserve a mention here as well.
Even though these awesome people don’t do any work on the game itself, they are still a huge help. Without them I don’t think anything would get done around here.
I’ve been a stay at home dad for just over 5 years. Since quitting my job in retail I went to school for 3D art and animation for games and earned my bachelor’s degree. My goal was always to make games, but I didn’t think making my own games for a living would ever be a real possibility. Luckily the opportunity presented itself when we learned that child care cost more than what I made at my job. My wife’s career, however, was just beginning to take off and she went on to support the family while I followed my dream of being a dev dad.
Just over a month ago my wife, Janna, was informed that the position she currently held was being eliminated. This put her in an awkward spot where she had to choose between applying for positions across the country that she didn’t want, or to leave the company she had invested her life into for 12 years.
After a few weeks of serious contemplation she decided that it was time to put all of our cards on the table with Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff.
Now that she’s helping full time with Swords ‘n Magic we have no other income until the game launches. Kickstarter is a chance for us to fund the development of the game without having to go bankrupt in the meantime.
With your help we’ll be able to see the rest of the development through without worrying about how to put food on our tables, but we’ll also be able to give the game the love and attention it deserves. We’ve budgeted a chunk of the funds for a custom soundtrack and already have a musician ready to go. We’re putting some funds toward marketing to make sure that the game has as many eyes on it as we can get. Some of the funding will go into custom animations and sound effects for the game as well as any additional tools and software costs we run into along the way. And finally, we plan on paying our wonderful programmer, Moz, a cut for all the hard work he’s already put in with nothing in return. It’s not every day you find a skilled programmer who has enough love for a project to work for a revenue share. We’re very lucky to have him so you can play Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff with your friends and family. As it was meant to be played.
But in the event that the Kickstarter fails, we still plan to continue the project. We hope you understand that this means we’ll have to cut back heavily on the game’s features and content. We’ll have to cancel the musician, deal with limited animation and sound effect assets, we’ll have to find a way to market the game on no budget and worst of all, rush the project to completion. This means the game won’t be what we envision, but I couldn’t move on from it without knowing that we did everything we could to make it succeed.
I truly believe wholeheartedly in this game. I hope that you’ll consider supporting us in this project so we can bring my passion project to life. I can’t wait to see you in the game. Thanks for reading. <3
Based on all the Kickstarter horror stories of games being abandoned after a successful campaign, I think it’s obvious that the biggest risk is this game not being completed. I’ve been working on this project for over two years and have restarted the project twice for different reasons. I’ve since brought on a programmer and have grown a fantastic community through Twitch and Youtube. I think having this many people counting on me, requesting regular updates and cheering me on has kept me on track far longer than I could have done on my own and I have no doubt it will continue to motivate me to finish. In the end we think being open and honest is always the best course of action, especially when asking for a community to fund a large project like this. Without your help, this project can’t happen, so it’s only fair to keep you in the loop when we run into problems or setbacks. We promise never to leave you in the dark about the status of the project or issues we encounter.