It’s been a good couple of months since we last heard from Action Square’s latest mobile game based on the Netflix series Kingdom The Blood. Thankfully, the developers have an update for us as the team recently spoke to IGN and showed off some more gameplay with developer commentary.
The dev commentary previews more of the game running on mobile along with the game’s design philosophy and gameplay features. We also got to find out what kind of gameplay modes will be coming, including a story mode, PvP, and co-op boss battles.
Kingdom The Blood currently has no release date but is coming to PC and mobile devices with cross-platform support.
▍ Kingdom The Blood Gameplay Commentary (IGN)
▍ Kingdom The Blood Gameplay
From the developer commentary, we got a look at a whole bunch of features and essential gameplay mechanics in Kingdom The Blood. let’s take a look at these briefly as they were described in the commentary.
■ Character Design
A focus on the designs of the characters and outfits was based heavily on traditional clothing, which they referenced from both the series and art history. Characters can wield a variety of weapons and styles. It should be noted that while the devs showed off various character designs, all of the gameplay shown in the video featured one-handed sword combat.
The devs then also showed off the motion capture work done to capture realistic motions of fighting, translated from human, to mock model, to the final product.
■ Combat
in Kingdom The Blood, zombies play a huge role in the game’s world. You’ll be able to explore various regions of Korea based on the story, fighting human and zombie enemies. Since the game is said to be 100% manually controlled, there likely won’t be any sort of autoplay or sweep features when it comes to completing stages.
One of the interesting mechanics shown off was the use of blood. As you fight zombies and get damaged, your character will be covered in blood. The more blood you have on you, the more easily you’ll be detected by zombies, and their feverous rage increases.
We got a small look at this in action as while fighting, several zombies came scrambling over the character quickly overwhelming them. It seems taking little damage while meticulously dealing with zombies will be a key factor in adjusting the game’s difficulty, and I wonder if there are certain moves that may even specialize in spraying as little blood as possible.
Aside from that we also got a look at boss combat. The boss health bar shows two meters, health bar and what looked like a rage mechanic as the boss’s second meter had multiple icons below it, and got quickly depleted after he was struck by the player.
■ Character Customization
We also got a look at the various currencies the game has and a key feature, customization. Some attacks can be performed in a sequence of combos, and in Kingdom The Blood you can customize each part of the combo chain with a different attack.
Certain attacks have different properties, not just in terms of damage but also seems like they can apply buffs or other effects based on certain requirements. This system is very reminiscent of God Hand where you can swap out any moves during a sequence, though poor planning will lead to your combo looking wonky, or being too slow to execute.
■ Boss Modes
Then the game showed off some co-op gameplay with four players beating on a boss together. It’s worth noting that there’s a microphone next to the player names suggesting voice chat is available.
■ Cross-Platform Support
Finally we got confirmation that the game will support cross-platform play between mobile and PC, letting you take the action home on your computer, or anywhere to go on your phone.
