Before pandemic hit Hungary, there was a rumour going around in the office that the concept team was talking about a „zombie Arthur” game, and pretty much everybody in the marketing department thought that this was some kind of prank. Turns out, there was indeed a decision to return to a corrupted Avalon where a mad, undying Arthur had its dark influence.

Narrative designer Viktor Juhász explains the origins of the idea for King Arthur: Knight's Tale: „Producer Zoltán Pozsonyi and I were chatting when somebody mentioned a concept art that was left unused: a medieval throne room in ruins with a dead dragon among the debris. After some back and forth we realized that this could be Camelot after a horrible battle.” King Arthur II had its fair share of apocalyptic battles where Britannia itself was at stake and NeocoreGames already had built its own spin on the Arthurian legend. Not much was said about what happened after the battle of Camlann, though.

After many years of developing action-RPGs, NeocoreGames was itching to try something else. The tactical genre came up. This would complement our own King Arthur IP, and the heroes of the Round Table would fit nicely in the genre with their own abilities and personalities. But how would one tell a King Arthur story if King Arthur was dead? Inspiration hit Viktor: „Let’s set the story on Avalon, on the Celtic afterlife, where a wounded, half-insane Arthur exist, alongside dead knights of the Round Table” Co-writer János Tóth proposed another twist: let Mordred be the protagonist! He could land on any quadrant of the Morality chart, either on the road to redemption or he could conquer Avalon as a tyrant.

Alongside these conceptual developments there were many new things happening in the background, prototypes started to pop up on community gatherings, the studio started exploring photogrammetry using real-world objects and drone footage for terrain, the CoreTech engine received numerous visually impressive upgrades, and things were looking indeed very promising.

The studio also realized that this was a somewhat niche genre, and opted for a Kickstarter campaign – something we never tried before. It was an exciting new challenge for the marketing team as well, given the fact that now the entire office was closed down due to the arrival of COVID, so pretty much the entire campaign was built up working from home. And the Kickstarter was successful! With the unique challenge of remote working, the team was laser-focused on bringing this brand new dark fantasy tactical RPG to the players.

In 2021, the game arrived in Early Access, and in 2022, the full King Arthur: Knight’s Tale was finally out. In the following two years, the game received many free updates, such as a massive install size reduction, a 2.0 rebalancing, and two thematic endgame modes. In 2024, the game was released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X. Among the Kickstarter bonuses (and later DLCs) you can find a short story collection featuring unique character stories written by Hungarian fantasy authors, a soundtrack by Gergely Buttinger, and a massive art book.

Legendary Hungarian fantasy writer Zsolt Nyulászi has been a long time consultant then narrative lead at NeocoreGames – he developed a story idea for a DLC featuring the Roman underworld. Then (as it happens) the project started growing way beyond its initial scope. At some point, the studio decided to release King Arthur: Legion IX as a standalone game, featuring a brand new roster of heroes lead by Roman tribune Gaius Julius Mento, a full story campaign and challenging endgame levels.

King Arthur: Knight’s Tale and King Arthur: Legion IX are the latest games by NeocoreGames. But our story doesn’t end here.

For many years now, artists, writers, creative leads were working on something new in the background, and now the studio is focusing all of its attention on something new... yet not that unfamiliar.

But that is a story for the next year.