We game developers are notoriously bad at predicting dates. It’s as if someone snuck into all our homes and nicked our calendars. So although predicting the future is beyond our supernatural powers, we likely have at least a year of development left. Maybe longer depending on how many bathroom breaks we take.

We’d absolutely love to do a Switch version of Kynseed if the stars aligned. There’s no official plans yet though, cause getting onto other platforms can be a complicated process and right now we’re just focusing on building the core of the game first. But if those stars do ever align, we’ll be sure to let you know!

(Hey Nintendo, call us.)

Kynseed is being made by PixelCount Studios, one of the baby Phoenix chicks that has sprung from the ashes of Lionhead Studios. Our fledgling studio consists of two Lionhead veterans who have been involved in every Fable game, Black & White, and The Movies (among others). Our goal as a studio is to continue the spirit of Lionhead with games that are charming, humorous, very British, and eccentric. Kynseed for PC is an action-adventure game developed by the indie studio PixelCount Studios. It is a small group of developers who work in Lionhead, a studio that created Fable game series. Kynseed takes place in a fantasy world inspired by the British folklore. Our hero is a farmer who tries to survive in a world that adapts to his actions.

We hope so! There’s no official plans just yet though. It’s important to us that we build and refine the foundations of the game first before trying to juggle other platforms. We’re definitely open to doing other platforms, but for now we’re focused on developing the core game.

Of course you can! We adore streamers and love watching them play the game. If you need absolutely anything from us to help support your stream, don’t hesitate to ask. For screenshots, logos, and even high quality exports of our official videos, feel free to make use of the Kynseed Media Kit.

The only favour we ask of you is that you let your audience know you’re playing a highly work-in-progress incomplete version of the game. First impressions are incredibly important for indies such as ourselves, so if your viewers are seeing Kynseed for the very first time we wouldn’t want them to mistake it for a finished game!

We do have a short little message at the start of the game that we feel serves as a nice introduction to give your audience. (Though if that’s not your style as a streamer then no stress.) The main thing is to just mention to your audience a few times that the game is in Early Access and still has much more to come.

Oh, and feel free to alert us on Discord or Twitter (or wherever) if you’re streaming Kynseed! We love popping into streams to see how players are getting on with the game. Not only is it incredibly helpful for us to see other people’s play styles, but we also just genuinely enjoy hanging out and talking with folks. We’re a fairly chatty bunch, if you couldn’t already tell.

The easiest way to follow development is to join us on our Discord or check in on our forums. We also post official news updates very often, such as The PixelCount Post – our regularly released devlog. We’re also on numerous social media platforms, many of which you can find by hitting that handy ‘Social’ button on the top right of the screen.

Why yes, there is! The Kynseed Roadmap is frequently updated and offers a good look at the development milestones in the near future. There’s also a handy section at the bottom half of the roadmap which lists all the content still to come and its current state of implementation.

Every month we release a stable game update alongside a written progress report. We also release ‘experimental’ updates every few weeks. Typically once we’ve completed a few monthly updates in a row, we then have enough content to combine it all together into a single milestone. (Milestones are those extra big updates listed in our Kynseed Roadmap.)

Interested in getting access to the experimental updates? Head to this forum thread to see how.

We love hearing about your feedback or hearing what ideas you have about the game. To share them, just hop on our Discord and give us a shout or visit our forums and make a thread. (Or contact us anywhere else you bump into us on the ol’ internet.)

The easiest way to do that is by sending us a bug report to Bugs@Kynseed.com, or by using our Contact Us, or by making a thread in our bug report forum. When you do, just be sure to include as much info as you can about your issue. Below is a general list of what we’ll likely need from you when reporting a bug:

• A description of the bug
• Details on what you were doing in the game and how we can replicate your bug
• Your operating system and any other system specs you can share
• Bonus points for screenshots!

If you’re experiencing a crash, try to include either a screenshot of the crash screen (the red screen of text the game shows when crashing) or attach the “Error.txt” file found in the game’s main folder.

There’s no plans currently. Right now our focus is on developing Kynseed from the ground up as a unique single player experience.

The game is still very much in development with the team writing new books and dialogue almost daily! Because of that, we’ll be saving language localization for nearer the end of Kynseed’s development. We don’t yet have a list of all the languages Kynseed will support, as it’ll largely come down to the time and resources of our small team, but we hope to cover as many as we can.

Kynseed uses the MonoGame engine, a versatile engine using C#. MonoGame is also the same engine used by Stardew Valley, Bastion, Fez, Axiom Verge, TowerFall, and many others!

Eventually, yes! There’s a lot of music still left to make, but once the time comes we’ll definitely make the soundtrack available to folks. (Plus, for those of you who originally backed the game at the appropriate tier level, you’ll be getting a free high quality copy of the soundtrack as a backer reward!)

Kynseed requires a graphics card that supports DirectX 11 due to using a version of MonoGame (our engine), which requires it to run. Read on below for all other specific requirements, but just bear in mind that these are all rough estimates for now since the game is still in development.

OS: Windows 7 or Higher
Processor: Intel Core i3
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 Compatible Video Card
Storage: 550 MB available space

If you run into any problems, feel free to drop us a bug report!

You can find Kynseed at any of the following purveyors of fine digital goods:

Why yes! Kynseed started with nothing more than a Kickstarter page and a humble prototype. From there, our amazing community of backers helped us reach and exceed our crowdfunding goal, those generous devils. This then allowed us to start proper development of the game and to eventually release on Early Access.

Our crowdfunding campaign may be over, but there’s still many ways you can help support the game. The absolute easiest way is by buying a copy of the game, as that helps sustain development and ensures the team doesn’t have empty tummies. Of course, there’s also many other ways we could use your support. Below are a just a handful of ideas:

• Purchase a copy of the game
• Alternatively, add us to your wishlist (if using Steam)
• Consider leaving a review of the game
• Help out and answer questions in our community
• Follow us on social media and help us spread the word
• Stream and/or make videos about the game

Our original crowdfunding and late backer program has officially come to an end. Thanks so much to our over 10,000 backers!

The good news is we’ve now released the game on Early Access so you can still follow progress and help support the game’s development!

Many of our backer rewards won’t be terribly interesting until the game gets closer to being finished. For example, we can’t send out the soundtrack until the entire soundtrack is done! Or the art book for example, which would be very incomplete and unexciting until we’ve had a chance to make all the game’s art.

So in general, backer rewards will get made and sent closer to the time of final release. As always, we’ll be sure to keep you updated on all this as development continues along.

By now all backers have been emailed their keys for Kynseed. These will have been sent to whatever backer email you used and will have likely been sent from Humble Bundle, who we used to help us send out keys. So if you haven’t received a key yet, be sure to first check your old emails for a message from either PixelCount or Humble Bundle. (Don’t forget to check your spam folder too!)

However, if you’re still unable to find your key, no need to fret. Just shoot us a message at Hey@PixelCountStudios.com or via our Contact Us page, and we’ll get straight to work on the case of the missing key!

If you’re redeeming your backer key through Humble Bundle, you’ll be given the choice between Steam or GOG. Feel free to choose whichever you prefer! If your backer tier gets you 2 keys, you’ll get the option for both!

If you already have a Steam key, we’ll be happy to make the swap for you. Just reach out to Hey@PixelCountStudios.com or on our Contact Us page and we’ll revoke your Steam key and send you a GOG key in its place.

Once it comes time for us to put all our backers into the credits (closer to final release of the game), we’ll send out an email to everyone asking them to confirm or change the name that we have on file. If you want to use someone else’s name or a different name entirely, you’ll get the chance to do that at that time.

Much like the other backer rewards, this one won’t be ready ’til much further along into development. That said, we are currently looking at ways to possibly release this a bit earlier than all the other rewards, but we don’t have an official ETA in mind just yet. Though as always, we’ll be sure to keep you posted!

Yup! For every backer that we have, we’ve planted one real life tree in their honour. Feel free to read our full tree donation announcement if you like, but below is a quick summary of how it all works:

We’re not big fans of business babble and we try to avoid it at all costs. So rather than be secretive about what this is costing us, we figured we’d just straight up tell you. We’re working with a reforestation project who’s been doing this a long time and their organization has some of the most passionate experts in the field. By working with these fine folks, it’s going to cost us 10 cents per tree per backer.

Flippin’ crazy, right?

When we first had this idea, the main reason we never really pursued it was because of how expensive we imagined it might be. The fact is, all you backers made your pledges to support a game’s development, not the humanitarian aspirations of its developers. So the cost of this sort of thing was often the reason we kept nixing the idea. But at 10 cents a tree, we were more than willing to lose such a small sliver of revenue from each pledge. That 10 cents covers the transportation of seedlings, planting them, and then weeding them later in the season.

Here’s some of the specifics:

• Each tree only cost us 10 cents
• All Kickstarter backers got a tree donated
• All late backers got a tree donated
• All of which means that over 10,000 trees have been planted!

Thanks to the overwhelming support of all of you wonderful people, we’ve helped plant a small forest. For a moment, try to imagine what 10,000 trees looks like. Think about how crazy that is.

For each of you backers that plant the Kynseed acorn when playing for the first time, there will exist in the real world an actual tree that you’ve also helped plant.

Indeed! Many of us here on the PixelCount team had a hand in Fable’s development ranging from designing the world of Albion to programming many of the tools that helped create it. To read more about what parts of Fable we worked on, just hop on over to our Meet the Team page.

Majority of the team does indeed trace their roots back to Lionhead Studios (along with a few new faces we’ve since added to our team). In addition to working on Fable, our team has also worked on many other Lionhead titles as well, such as Black & White.

Our goal as a studio is to continue the spirit of Lionhead with games that are charming, humorous, very British, and eccentric. Think of us like a small quirky offshoot branch of the Lionhead family tree.

You bet your patootie we are! We don’t have any publisher and have never had any outside investors provide funding. We’re 100% player supported and any money that the company makes goes straight back into the game (as well as making sure the team can eat from time to time, of course).

Currently our team is a total of 7 people. (Though this number fluctuated around a tiny bit at the start of development due to getting our amazing ex-Lionhead concept artist pals to help out during the first few months of development.)

In all our hearts.

Oh, you mean geographically?

Since we’re a small independent company, PixelCount doesn’t have a proper studio office of any kind. This keeps costs down and gives us the freedom to work in the nude if we want. A few team members reside in the United Kingdom but some of us are also from the Netherlands and even sunny Los Angeles.

Why yes, we have an infinite unending supply. (Mainly cause we have developer cheats enabled.)

Good question. Pigs can run at speeds of up to 18 kph (11 mph). This means they can run a whole mile in just 7 minutes, the fast buggers.

We have a strong anti-sandwich stance when it comes to hot dogs, in accordance with the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council’s official policy.

Indie game developer PixelCount Studios released a development blog yesterday in which they promised that a release date for their upcoming game, Kynseed, would be coming soon. Or more accurately:

“We’ll soon say how soon soon is.” – PixelCount Studios

Kynseed is a 2D sandbox adventure from veterans of Lionhead Studios’ Fable series, which features beautiful pixel art, an atmospheric soundtrack, pig riding, a world which changes, reacts to your choices, remembers your deeds, and puns… lots of puns. Kynseed became a reality after a successful Kickstarter campaign in the summer of 2017, and PixelCount aims to bring the chill-out charm of Stardew Valley, the reactive sandbox world of Fable, and a healthy dose of fables and silliness to PCs this year.

Farm life is simple and downright boring, until your character comes to posses the mystical Kynseed, a magical seed which will entwine itself with your life, causing your choices to manifest on its branches. As you to a to grow your family tree, you’ll be able to step into the shoes of your children in order continue your adventure and further grow your reputation. Of course, such a power does not come without a price, so you’d best be prepared to pay when Mr Fairweather comes calling.

The world of Kynseed is complex, rich, and very detailed. Everyone and everything in the game ages, has fears, phobias, allergies, and desires — even animals and the monsters themselves. Villages each feature their own customs, festivals, delicacies and attitudes, from the puritanical Tunts to the people of Poppyhill and their annual Underpant Frenzy. The sandbox nature encourages you to play the way you want: Raise a family, farm your land, run your shops, and explore a lovingly crafted land where all the old proverbs and superstitions are true.

You can learn more about Kynseed by checking the PixelCount Studios website, the Steam store, or even by downloading the Kickstarter demo and trying it out for yourself. Kynseed is due out sometime in early 2019, we hope to learn just how early early is soon!