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Press release:
October 1st, 2026 – Legendary Pixels is announcing Kingfall: a roguelike deckbuilder where your cards move like chess pieces, designed with a little help from a ten-year-old boy!

The game will let you build your army, upgrade your troops, and combine abilities and blessings as you fight your way through the kingdom, merging elements of classic roguelike card battlers and TGC with the rules and hierarchies of chess.

The idea behind the game started on a Friday afternoon, with two very different gaming obsessions: game developer and DryGin Studios owner J-F Mitchell (Bio Inc, Extinction Day) had been hooked on Inscryption for weeks. His ten-year-old son was just as hooked on chess. Between playing Inscryption on his Steam Deck and playing chess with his son, Mitchell started wondering what a mix of the two would look like. His son liked the idea, and soon the two started building something that they could play together.

Over the next two days father and son built a board, made coins, printed cards, and cut everything out by hand. At the same time, Mitchell focused on giving his son a hands-on introduction to the basics of game design. That meant coming up with new ideas, testing them out, finding what didn’t work, changing the rules, and trying again. Around 15 iterations and a lot of cutting later, they had the beginnings of Kingfall.

In Kingfall, each card follows a chess-inspired pattern. Available units are split into classes and, just like in the centuries-old board game, pawns attack diagonally, knights use their familiar L-shaped pattern, and higher-ranking units dominate the map.

With over 300 cards,your deck determines the army you bring into battle. At the same time, Kingfall features blessings and upgrades to discover throughout each run, which you can then leverage to further fine-tune your strategy. The game is designed to feel deeply tactical, with rewarding battles set against the backdrop of a wider conquest campaign.

Eventually Mitchell returned to the homemade prototype and decided to develop it into a full game under the Legendary Pixels name – to give this personal, family venture its own identity, separate from his work at DryGin Studios.

The title is expected to launch in early 2027, with a first demo already available during the October 2026 edition of the Steam Next Fest. Speaking on the project and its unique backstory, Mitchell said “My son definitely got too much screentime from testing all different builds but we had a ton of fun and we can’t wait to show it to others!”

Key Features

A unique hybrid of roguelike card battler and chess, with units that move and attack mimicking the rules of the centuries-old board game;

Over 300 cards to unlock, collect, and fine-tune through blessings and permanent upgrades;

Tactical, highly-rewarding battles where your deck, approach, and strategy will decide the fate of your opponent;

A wider Kingdom Conquest campaign with pitched battles, shrines, markets, and challenging boss encounters;

Kingfall is scheduled to release in Q1 2027, with a demo coming to Steam Next Fest in October. At the time of writing, advance access to the demo is available via review key for interested members of the press and media. If you would like to receive access to Kingfall, please express your interest by responding to this email.

Players can add Kingfall to their Steam wishlist to follow the game’s development and receive notifications when it becomes available.