King under the Mountain is a simulation-based settlement-building strategy game set in a fantasy world.

A simulated world – The game world is built on a series of interlocking systems which combine together to simulate a living, breathing world. As night changes to day, trees and plants will grow (or not) based on sunlight and rainfall. The local environment and changing seasons have effects on the native flora and fauna. Your settlers and other characters have their own personal social and physical needs that you’ll have to fulfil to keep them happy (or at least stop them from breaking and going insane!)

Procedural generation – Every map is randomly generated from an initial seed (a large number) so that no two maps will ever be the same – unless you choose to use the same seed! The art assets for the game have been created in such a way that they can be drawn by the game engine for near limitless variation in colour – so every tree, plant and character will have their own unique combination of colours and appearance.

Peaceful expansion – It’s an important design goal that it’s possible to play the entire game without getting into armed conflict with other factions (if you choose to). Although weapons and combat can be significant parts of gameplay, we wanted to make sure you can peacefully build up a fully-functioning town to have the satisfaction of sitting back and watching your settlers go about their business in an “art farm” style of play.

Multiple ways to play – As well as different ways to build and grow your settlement (do you focus on mining? farming? crafting? buying and selling goods?), in King under the Mountain you can play as several different races and factions each with their own unique gameplay elements. You could build a dwarven fortress dug deep into the side of a mountain, a town of humans at an important river crossing, or a tribe of orcs hunting and raiding others.

Mod friendly engine – Another big design goal is that everything you see or read in the game (and the variables behind them) are fully open to modification. In fact, the base game is built as an engine with one base mod applied to it (which modders can look at to see how things work).