Copenhagen, Denmark – April 20, 2025 – Danish indie studio Playwood Project, creators of the strategy game Wartile, have officially launched a Kickstarter campaign for their next title, Successor. Set in the same but more stylized handcrafted miniature universe, Successor expands the studio’s signature diorama-style gameplay with deeper tactical systems, procedural content, richer lore, and a bold new blend of real-time with pause combat and rogue-lite progression.
The campaign seeks to raise €25,000 to fund the final stages of development, inviting players to help fine-tune the game’s systems, story, and content during its last major development sprint.
"Successor is our love letter to miniature fantasy and tactical gameplay," says Michael Rud, CEO and Creative Director at Playwood Project. "With our community's support, we want to bring the world of Successor to life as a lasting franchise, one built on exploration, strategic depth, and a truly unique visual style."
The Goal of the Kickstarter
While Successor has been in development for several years and many of its core systems are already in place, the team at Playwood Project believes there’s still significant potential for refinement before a public release. The Kickstarter campaign was launched to secure funding for this final development phase, allowing the team to polish gameplay systems, enhance the UI, and add meaningful content based on continued community feedback.
Beyond funding, the campaign also serves a broader purpose: to strengthen and grow the Successor community with dedicated players who want to shape the game’s final form actively. Community-driven playtesting has long been a core part of the studio’s development process, and the team is committed to keeping that feedback loop alive throughout the final stretch.
Finally, this campaign marks another step in building a long-term brand around Playwood Project’s signature style of miniature strategy games, which began with Wartile and continues with Successor. In a saturated market, the team is focused on sustainable growth, crafting not just a great game but a lasting universe that players can return to for years to come.
Just release: Successor Demo: Lord of Bones
Coinciding with the Kickstarter, Playwood Project has released a public Demo on Steam featuring two campaigns:
- “Betrayal” – A tutorial campaign introducing Lord Craig and the core gameplay mechanics.
- “Lord of Bones” – An exclusive campaign to the demo, showcasing the rise of the Grimlegion faction, forcing Lord Craig to face the undead menace.
This hands-on preview offers players a taste of the game’s unique tone, combat systems, and atmospheric storytelling.
About Successor
Successor is a dark‑fantasy, rogue‑lite tactical RPG that fuses real‑time action with pause, plan, and execute mechanics on lavish miniature diorama battlefields.
Choose one of three Lords, recruit and equip hero classes, as you push through procedurally generated regions toward a climactic duel against the final Ruler of the Kingdom. Each region offers quests, rewards, or intense battles set in exotic biomes with weather‑driven hazards that reward clever positioning and timing, between handcrafted story campaigns and the customizable Adventure Mode, where players create their own campaigns, endless replayability, and a living tabletop aesthetic.
Every run opens with a crucial decision: pick one of three Lords, each defined by a unique combat style and branching skill tree. That choice shapes your entire campaign, dictating how you position and upgrade your coming heroes and unleash synergies on the battlefield.
Presented with a Kingdom map, you must battle your way through contested regions on a path toward the Ruler’s stronghold, an epic showdown that will decide the fate of the land.
To conquer each region, you must explore randomly generated maps, uncover quests and dilemmas, and recruit specialized Heroes. Equip them with synergistic weapons, armor, and trinkets, and upgrade their abilities to exploit every faction’s hidden strengths and weaknesses. Procedural regions, evolving threats, and randomized event cards ensure fresh tactical puzzles every time you play.
Skirmishes play out on richly detailed miniature diorama boards using the game’s signature real-time with pause system: freeze the action at any moment, execute your commands, and watch them unfold immediately during the pause.
Beyond the nine handcrafted story campaigns, Adventure Mode lets you build bespoke runs by selecting kingdom size, ruling factions, and applying world‑altering Kickers.
Whether you’ve got five minutes to win a battle board, thirty minutes to conquer a region, or hours to dive into a full campaign, Successor offers tight, satisfying gameplay loops with tactical depth.
Key Features:
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Miniature Diorama Worlds: Battle across richly detailed, handcrafted diorama boards, each tied to unique biomes and factions.
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Real-Time with Pause, plan, and execute Combat: Balance chaos and cunning in a system that blends RTS and classic turn-based mechanics.
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Rogue-Lite inspired - where every run is a fresh chance to explore new builds and push deeper into the game’s evolving lore.
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Story & Adventure Modes: Experience up to 9 handcrafted campaigns or build your own campaign using a set of parameters and rule-changing “kickers.”
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Factions, Heroes & Lore: Face off against 10 diverse enemy factions, each with their own tactics and themes. Collect 13+ hero classes and uncover deep world lore.
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Miniature Aesthetic: Every unit, map, and battlefield is designed to feel like a living tabletop world brought to life.
Kickstarter Campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/739372650/successor
Steam Demo Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2148890/Successor_Demo/
Youtube trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkfmbr1jdEc
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About Playwood Project
Playwood Project was founded in 2014 by Michael Rud Jakobsen, whose background at IO Interactive includes work on AAA titles such as Kane & Lynch and Hitman. The small Copenhagen-based indie studio developed and published Wartile in 2018, a unique blend of tactical gameplay and miniature art design. The studio continues its mission to craft rich, strategic experiences grounded in atmospheric and thematically rich worldbuilding and innovative mechanics that dare to challenge the current standards.