Well if you’re going to base your new fantasy RPG on anything, a decade-old and long-running German fantasy novel series seems as good as anything. The Dwarves is being put together by King Art Games, who’ve previously worked on The Book Of Unwritten Tales, among other things. It’s about a party of the titular warriors gathered by Tungdil, the main character. Quite what quest they’re on hasn’t been revealed, but it will involve killing huge amounts of enemies through something they’re calling the ‘Crowd-Combat System’.
You’ll be gathering up to 12 companions on your journey, but only four will be able to accompany you in battle. The press release goes so far as to actually mention Helm’s Deep as an inspiration for its huge fights, and that’s definitely the feeling I’m getting. The systems are specifically designed to make enemies flood together so each swing of a hammer fells whole groups, sending them spinning through the air.
Series creatorMarkus Heitz is also on board to consult and will be creating new characters and designing quests not featured in his books.
You may have first heard of The Dwarves through a leak earlier this month on German website Hooked. Auto-translate had a dodgy time with the page but it looks like they’re claiming a Kickstarter will be announced along with the full reveal of the game at Gamescom and it should be released some time early 2016. Inevitably, we’ll find out more about this (and so much more) the first week of August.