Couchpotato spotted a developer inteview about Knights of Frontier Valley:

Knights of Frontier Valley – Developer Interview

The Turn Based Lovers report that you can sign up for an upcoming playtest for Knights of Frontier Valley:

Hardcore Old-School RPG Knights of Frontier Valley Opens Playtest Sign-Ups, Unlocking in January

Procedural world generation, deep character builds, and a slow-burn campaign start.

Knights of Frontier Valley, a game I’ve been following for a long time, has opened sign-ups for a Steam Playtest, with the build set to unlock for everyone in mid-January. The developer describes it as the next major alpha milestone after a previous closed test, and it’s free to join through the game’s Steam page.

This Playtest is not labeled as Early Access, but it’s meant to be “fully playable” and representative of the final experience, with more content planned for later.

[...]

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Learn more about combat of Knights of Frontier Valley:

Combat in Knights of Frontier Valley

Use tactical combat or quick resolve? Those are the differences (+ what happened at GamesCom)
Most honorable Knights,

in this update, I'll talk about combat. But first, I want to thank everyone who wishlisted the game after hearing about it at this year's GamesCom... it was quite a few people, which made this great event even better.

[...]

Quick vs Tactical combat

While characters like mages and thieves might frequently try to avoid a direct confrontation, it will be hard to not ever get involved in combat. And that is just fine, since tactical combat is one of the key features of Knights of Frontier Valley! In fact, combat happens often, and it is a major source of loot and experience.

When a battle starts, you are given a choice: do you want it to be resolved automatically ("Quick Combat"), or would you prefer to control all your character's actions in tactical combat?

During Quick Combat, a real battle takes place where the computer controls both sides. It runs much faster than tactical combat, though the speed can be adjusted.

While a battle is ongoing, the remaining combatants, the PC's injuries, and the power balance are updating in realtime. When things get ugly, you may try to run away. That is, if you still can... your chances of escaping will lower with any sustained leg injury and when the number of friendly combatants goes down. So if things turn out to not go in your favor, do not wait too long!

[...]

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Knights of Frontier Valley will get a public demo soon:

Coming soon: the Public Demo

Can you help Aldhelm out of a tight spot?

Most venerable Knights,

The public demo is coming soon! Everyone (read: You) will be able to download it for free and enjoy hours of gameplay. Mind that this is not Early Access, and it will not yet be what I have in my mind as the full vision of this game. For example, you will not be able to join factions yet or play past the third chapter. But it is going to be a very representative demo, and if you like it, it is safe to say you will like the finished game even more.

I am about halfway through the development cycle for this version and can now share the scope. The list is still subject to (minor) changes, but in general, this is what you can expect:

Quickdemo
So many demos to try, so little time. The quickdemo is a separate adventure called "Aldhelm's Path" which showcases some of the game's highlights. You will play a premade character named Aldhelm Sanderford who got himself in trouble... help him out, and then help him get rich!

Following the plot tightly, you should be able to complete this story within two hours (the original plan was 30 minutes, but that turned out to not be enough to make the story immersive). The background story is presented with a new "slideshow cutscene", similar to those describing the history of the valley.

Of course, aside from this quickdemo, the main game will also be available.

[...]

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The game engine for Knights of Frontier Valley is made from scratch:

Making a Game Engine from scratch

How (and why) a custom game Engine was developed for Knights of Frontier Valley

Venerable Knights,

When riding through Frontier Valley in search for adventure and glory, you travel across a dynamic world that goes through constant change. You will see the sun setting in the distance, trees swaying in the wind, and snowflakes painting the land white. When moving around, your path will be set up automatically to lead around obstacles in an efficient way.

Those features, and many more, are driven by the custom engine developed for Knights of Frontier Valley. To stay with above examples: the time when the sun should be setting is managed by the "Time Manager", a component that controls and keeps track of game time and ambient light. Precipitation and trees swaying in the wind rely on the "Weather Manager", and snowflakes are drawn by the map renderer using particle effects. Characters moving across the map use the custom Pathfinder algorithm.

If you are interested in how some of those things work and why I chose to write my own engine in the first place, you came to the right place!

There is also a video where I talk about the engine:

Thanks Farflame!

The Turn Based Lovers checked out the survival RPG Knights of Frontier Valley:

Hardcore RPG Knights of Frontier Valley Peeks Under the Hood

A solo-developer RPG where the main goal is to survive as long as possible.
I just devoured the latest devlog for Knights of Frontier Valley, an RPG I’ve been following for ages, and yes, I even wrote about it back in 2022. In March 2025, the legendary publisher MicroProse stepped in to back the project.

Today, I’m bringing you fresh details on solo development by Adamant Studios (Martin Menzel), and honestly, my hype for this title has only skyrocketed.

However, before diving into the details of the latest devlog, let’s introduce the game Menzel is working on, which is one of the most intriguing and promising RPGs on the horizon.

Knights of Frontier Valley drops players into a procedurally generated realm where no two journeys unfold the same way. Each run begins with a fresh world map, reshuffled dungeons, and shifting faction politics, while a fully simulated day-night cycle and four-season calendar make the landscape feel alive.

Whether you’re trudging through a winter blizzard or chasing fireflies on a balmy summer night, the game’s custom engine recalculates lighting, weather, and travel times on the fly, so that sunrise over a distant mountain range happens at the precise minute the in-game Time Manager predicts.

[...]

Knights of Frontier Valley works with procedural map generation:

Procedural map generation (+ Alpha 3.fun testing)

Dive into the details of world building in this unique RPG

Honorable Knights,

Let's talk about maps today. Maps are fascinating. They can be decorative and inspirational, making us dream of faraway places and the spots that haven't been explored. There may be tigers here.

But before diving into the topic of how maps are made in Knights of Frontier Valley, I'd like to share how the Alpha 3.fun release is going which went out to testers a week ago.

The amount of feedback is absolutely fantastic. I am reading all of it and try to address issues quickly, and it is amazing how much the game has improved in just in a few days. First, of course, there were bug fixes. The game seemed stable before the release, but players have a knack for finding weaknesses in the code right away. Many of them were reported by Alpha tester Eric Hensel - I appreciate his contribution.
64 bugs have been addressed since the release, with a few more on my radar. If anyone is interested in the detailed change list.

Then there were balancing and QoL improvements. Some opponents are now easier to beat, and the effects of bleeding have been further reduced, to name two examples.
The code now supports displays with an aspect ratio other than 16:9, which seem to be more common than I thought (or the Steam hardware survey would suggest).
There is a new indicator when moving between city quarter maps now, better showing where you are going. Many more things are on my list, mostly about making it clearer just how some of the unique features that you won't find in other games work.

[...]

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Learn more about Knights of Frontier Valley:

Knights of Frontier Valley | Developer Interview with Rob Kuntz and Adamant Studios

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MicroProse is the new publisher of Knights of Frontier Valley:

Knights of Frontier Valley - Publishing Announcement

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Knights of Frontier Valley has been influnced by tabletop gaming:

The influence of tabletop RPGs - plus a big announcement!

Tabletops inspired Knights of Frontier Valley. But there is more than that story to share.

Venerable Knights of the Valley,

Today I have an exciting announcement to make about a new partnership with a legendary tabletop game designer who will be working on Knights of Frontier Valley. But before I go into detail here, it is important to explain the massive influence tabletop RPGs had on the game, which is what makes this partnership so important.

In the 1980s, countless hours of my lifetime went towards playing tabletop RPGs with my friends. When I wasn't playing, and I was alone in my room, I read pre-made adventure modules (or made my own) and dreamt of playing them.

We started off with playing The Dark Eye, a German tabletop system inspired by Dungeons & Dragons™ (*). Then we switched over to D&D itself and stuck with it for years. Later we also tried other games including MERP, Midgard, Cyberpunk, and Call of Cthulu. I loved all of them, but D&D will always hold a special place in my heart.

[...]

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Adamant Studios has announced that Knights of Frontier Valley will be coming to Steam Early Access at the end of 2021.

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Greetings, venerable Knights of Frontier Valley!

Hi All,

Thanks for checking out this game.

I'm working as fast as I can on a playable Early Access release which will be a sandbox. This means you'll be able to explore the wilderness, enter some of the towns and dungeons, find treasure, beat up monsters, and more.

The world, dungeons, and to a large extend also the towns are procedurally generated, so each new game will be very different.

Everything you can see in the trailer is real game footage and the following things are working today:
- Creating your character
- Exploring the entire world map and zoomed-in wilderness maps
- Entering all dungeons and towns; however, most are still empty, so I'll leave those out of EA
- Using the inventory (most items that will be in the final game are already there)
- Some player character status - he can get tired and injured, rest and recover
- Ambience features including day/night-cycles, weather, and seasons
- Saving/loading the game
- Basic combat workflow (no AI yet)
- The lockpicking mini-game
- Some Cutscenes

A lot more will be added for EA, but the following will likely not be included in the first release:
- A real story and the 10 chapters the final game will be divided into
- Factions
- The ability to enter most buildings, dungeons, and towns
- Most (maybe all) quests
- Magic
- A tuned NPC-AI for combat and day-to-day behavior
- Two more mini-games (jousting and sniping)
- UI eyecandy

About the timeline... you probably know this - it will be done when it's done. With the exception of freelancing artists there is only one person working on this game (me), so please bear with me while I'm working on the design, programming, art and music spec/review/integration, testing, code building, social media, the website, campaigns and more. I absolutely love doing all of it but it just takes a bit of time. That said, without being able to make any promises, I'm aiming for something still this year.

It has been an incredible four and a half years coming to the point where it is now. The game is running on its own engine, so everything is done from scratch, plus, this is my first game, so there was a lot to learn too. But it has been tremendous fun, and being able to follow your dream is extremely rewarding.

If you'd like to learn more about the development process, please check out the dev blog on the website. There's also an FAQ page with some more info.

I'd love to hear any feedback and will be happy to answer any questions. You can find me on various social media platforms (see links on the store page, most updates are on Twitter), but I'm not posting all that often because this can get very time-intensive - I'd like to focus on finishing the game.

Cheers,
Martin