With less than two weeks to go before the worldwide launch of Stronghold: Warlords, we thought it would it would be entertaining to give our developers a blind castle-building challenge! Tasked with building the ultimate castle in under 30 minutes, four Firefly devs are challenged (and judged!) on their time-limited castle building skills in this new video.

Paul, Aaron, Tom and Nick all begin on a new map with little to no preparation and a single objective: Build the ultimate castle! They must do so on the ‘Jungle Clearing’ medium-sized map within the time limit, with their creations judged by none other than Firefly Studios co-founder and Stronghold designer Simon Bradbury. These hastily-constructed castles are rigorously graded based on their castle aesthetics, economic efficiency and of course defensive strength. The series *is* called ‘Stronghold’ after all… Continue reading →

While new gameplay footage is coming later this week, today we’re releasing our third and final ‘Making Of Stronghold: Warlords’ teaser. Today’s video is centred around the reveal of Stronghold: Warlords, which took place way back in June 2019. Featuring a snippet of what you can expect from the full documentary at launch, this quick look shows Paul and Simon discussing what goes into revealing a game to the press, as well as including a few behind the scenes E3 clips!

Available at launch as part of Stronghold: Warlords – Special Edition, this feature-length documentary takes a look behind the scenes with over two years of game development at Firefly Studios. Unpacking the complex process of creating a modern strategy/sim hybrid on PC, the documentary is designed to provide insight into these unique genres for those curious about their creation. Continue reading →

While we prepare new gameplay previews for the coming weeks, today we’re releasing a second short ‘Making Of Stronghold: Warlords‘ teaser video. Today’s preview discusses voice acting and the fine balancing act between historical authenticity, great performances and our Stronghold-style humour. In addition to planned support for 15 languages, we also made the decision quite early on to support audio in eight languages, as well as snippets of other languages for specific units. Music and sound design are so important to the Stronghold series that it felt necessary to include in the game and we hope it’s something enjoyed by players worldwide at launch!

Available at launch as part of Stronghold: Warlords – Special Edition, this feature-length documentary takes a look behind the scenes with over two years of game development at Firefly Studios. Unpacking the complex process of creating a modern strategy/sim hybrid on PC, the documentary is designed to provide insight into these unique genres for those curious about their creation. Continue reading →

Today we have a short and sweet video for you in the form of our first ‘Teaser‘ for the ‘Making Of Stronghold: Warlords‘ documentary. Available at launch as part of Warlord’s Special Edition, this feature-length documentary takes a look behind the scenes with over two years of game development at Firefly Studios. Charting the course of Warlords’ development from production to reveal and eventually release, Firefly’s very own Aaron Hayden takes viewers through each aspect of game production.

Unpacking the complex process of creating a modern strategy/sim hybrid on PC, the documentary is designed to provide insight into these unique genres for those curious about their creation. This teaser provides a glimpse of our concept, writing and research for the game. These building blocks form the basis of our design for a new Stronghold title and Warlords’ new setting provided fertile ground for both our gameplay and historical goals!

The Special Edition will be available at launch on Steam for $49.99, £34.99 and €39.99, with the base game also available without the above extras for $39.99, £29.99 and €34.99.

This week we thought we’d take a break between the countless player questions about Stronghold: Warlords (Join the Discord if you have more!) and co-op multiplayer previews for a chance of pace. Warlords features a whopping 16 units and 10 siege weapons, in addition to many different castle defences and other special units like the warlords themselves. This got us thinking… Just how many ways are there for soldiers, peasants, monks and innocent diplomats to die in the game?

It turns out the answer to that question is at least 22! That’s right. We counted 22 unique means by which these virtual lives can be snuffed out in an instant (Not Pictured: Death by flooding). So what better way to celebrate this digital carnage than with a montage of death and destruction? Set to the tune of the William Tell Overture by Rossini, watch as our Videographer Aaron Hayden cuts, crushes, incinerates and obliterates his peasant population in the name of your entertainment. Continue reading →

Today we reveal even more footage of our unique ‘shared base’ co-op mode, coming to Stronghold: Warlords‘ multiplayer at launch on March 9th 2021! Using fresh multiplayer gameplay from our pre-release build, this preview follows two brave ‘Lords of Firefly’, as Nick and Aaron carefully level up the challenge from last week with two medium difficulty opponents.

Going up against the legendary Thuc Phan and Qin Shi Huang on a fresh multiplayer map, our developers must choose between a fresh selection of warlords in the form of the Dragon, Pig and Mouse. Each provides unique tactical options, perks and advantages for the controlling player, assuming they can either win their allegiance using Diplomacy or force them to bend the knee with military pressure.

We still have plenty to show between now and launch, so stay tuned for more multiplayer videos as we complete work on this game mode and build toward our March 9th release date on Steam.