Kynseed, a beautifully hand-crated sim sandbox RPG, is now available to play on Steam.
The game, from developer PixelCount Studios – a studio made up of veterans from the Fable series – allows players to grow their family legacy over generations as your characters live, age and die in Kynseed’s mystical fantasy world – along with your pets!
Watch the Kynseed ‘Out Now’ trailer:
About the game:
You’ve been given the Kynseed, a mystical acorn that grows into a family tree where your choices manifest in its branches. Raise a family, farm the land, run shops, and explore the world as its inhabitants age around you. When you die, step into the shoes of your children and continue your legacy. In this beautifully hand-crafted world an epic tale of adventure and ambitions will unravel around you as you discover the secrets of the land of Quill and its cast of memorable characters.
Live your life in a quirky world where everyone ages and dies, including your pets!
Take control of the mystical Kynseed and grow your family legacy over generations as you pass your skills and powers down to your children.
Reviews Roundup
Early reviews for Kynseed are tracking very favourably.
1,400+ reviews on Steam currently has the game sitting on a ‘Very Positive’ rating.
Early Metacritic reviews have averaged the game out to 86/100, while Open Critic isn’t that much different having the game tracking at a Top Critic Average of 83/100.
Here’s a selection of excerpts from a handful of early reviewers:
Dexerto gave the game 90/100:
Kynseed is the obvious product of hard work and dedicated development. PixelCount Studios has taken every standard mechanic from other farming games and looked at it from a new angle, offering fans of the slice-of-life genre something that is not only refreshing, but utterly and delightfully unique. The game is a perfect example of how farming sims can create a magical experience from the mundane, and it is a must have for any cozy gamer’s library.
Dexerto
PC Gamer gave the game 89/100:
What I enjoy the most about Kynseed isn’t the complexity of its systems, or the originality of its story. It isn’t (just) the beautiful 2D pixelated art or the way you enter an area and the music shifts from cheerful to elegiac on a dime. It isn’t any single interaction with a villager, or relationship built up, or neat secret found. It’s the fact that the profound and the mundane mix so well together, how you can be bundling up radishes for a guy you met one minute and piecing together a supernatural mystery the next. There are minor stumbling blocks here and there for me—I wish the game had been clearer about certain time-saving tools up-front—but if you loved watching the seasons change in Animal Crossing or revelled in following a powerful family in its ascendancy in Crusader Kings, you will love Kynseed.
PC Gamer
God is a Geek gave the game 90/100:
There’s no way I can cover everything in a review because the depth of gameplay and the variety of tasks to complete and uncover is staggering. The gorgeous art style makes the wealth of content possible, and with updates planned well after release, Kynseed is a perfect game for you to get stuck into. The magical nature of Quill, the various personalities of everyone you encounter, and the sense of community and friendship that exudes from it warms the heart, but there’s also a deep and personal story for you to unravel, along with your own narrative to discover. If you’re looking for a game that’ll consume your time while providing the same whimsy and charm (with a hint of darkness) as the Fable series, you can’t go far wrong with this one.
God is a Geek
Gaming Nexus gave the game 7/10:
If you want combat that feels unmatched in a life sim, Kynseed has it. If you want to look at beautiful pixel art, and hear a soundtrack that fits a game exceptionally well, Kynseed has that too. You can pick what you want to do in life and go out and achieve it. There is so much to see and do that it can feel overwhelming. But Kynseed lacks too. There’s little emotional toll to building relationships, and frustrating gameplay bugs. The attention to detail is massive in places and lacking in others. Knyseed is close to being the groundbreaking life sim of my dreams. But unfortunately, that dream is still elusive.
Gaming Nexus
PixelCount have also provided a post-launch road map:
Kynseed was released on Steam December 7, 2022.
The developers have stated they have no plans to release on console in the near future, but that they would “love to do a Switch version if the stars aligned.”