Painted Kingdoms is a minimalist strategy and defense game from developer Hectiq. It is set in a papercraft world where you play a crowned King in a blue cape, painting terrain onto a blank canvas to hold off the Ash Army. The game overview trailer premiered at The MIX Fall Game Showcase 2026 and was presented by Luca from Hectiq. It runs a little over two minutes and walks through nearly every system in the current demo build.
Quick answer: Painted Kingdoms is coming to PC through Steam. A free demo is available now, and no release date has been announced.
Painted Kingdoms core loop: paint, build, survive the wave
Each run starts with the King standing on mostly empty paper. Painting is how you claim ground. It creates biomes, it reveals resources and animals, and it links buildings into networks. Towers go down inside dotted range circles, and the Ash Army then arrives in waves of burning enemies that set paper structures alight. If you lose all of your painted core structures, the run ends in defeat.
Clearing a wave triggers a “WAVE DEFEATED” banner and pays out resources. You can spend them in two places. One is evolving your biomes. The other is upgrading towers, which means weighing your economy against how much defense you need for the next wave. The trailer’s footage carries a “This is a demo version: 0.514-c75ee” watermark, so the numbers below reflect that build.
Towers and branching upgrades
Four tower types appear in the trailer, each with a row of stat values. The icons for those values are not labeled on screen. The Rapid and Sniper towers both get a damage bonus when their target stands on a Meadow.
| Tower | Stat values shown | Meadow bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Attack Tower | 250 / 5.5 / 1 / 0.75 | None shown |
| Water Tower | 250 / 0.1 / 0.9 / 5 | None shown |
| Rapid Tower | 200 / 5 / 1.5 / 0.25 / 3 | +25% |
| Sniper Tower | 300 / 7 / 0.4 / 9 | +35% |
Upgrades split into separate paths. The Attack Tower shown can become either a Cannon or a Rapid fire variant, and the upgrade panel shows the before and after value for each stat. The second stat drops from 5.5 to 5 on both paths, which lines up with the Rapid fire note about reduced range.
| Upgrade | Description shown | Stat changes |
|---|---|---|
| Upgrade Cannon | Stronger hits against groups | 250→310, 5.5→5, 0.75→0.4, 11.55→7.7 |
| Upgrade Rapid fire | Fast fire, shorter range, random target | 250→290, 5.5→5, 0.75→1.6, 11.55→3.7 |
The two paths behave differently. The Cannon trades its third value down from 0.75 to 0.4 in exchange for more power against clustered enemies. Rapid fire more than doubles that same value and picks a random enemy within its range rather than focusing on one target.
Biomes, Biome Evolutions, and animal allies
Every biome you paint does more than decorate the map. The trailer shows three biomes:
- Forest: grows trees whose roots grab and slow passing enemies.
- Lake: soaks enemies, slows the spread of fire, and lowers enemy fire resistance.
- Meadow: increases damage from towers such as the Rapid Tower and Sniper Tower.
Biomes can also evolve. The trailer shows Regenerative Roots, a Biome Evolution that lets tree-triggered Roots recharge so they can fire more than once rather than being spent on a single use.
Lakes have their own building, the Lake Well. If your buildings are connected to the well through paint, they receive a lake buff that raises their fire defense and refresh rate. That buff also deals extra damage to wet enemies, scaled to physical damage. The Lake Well’s upgrade condition is having more than 4 buildings connected to a water network in total.
Painting can also uncover wild animals, such as rabbits. You can assign these animals to towers, and where you place them changes and boosts that tower’s stats.
Fire and the King’s hands-on combat
Your towers are paper, so fire is the most direct threat the Ash Army brings. Burning buildings show floating health bars. If you leave them alone, the flames spread to the structures next to them. The King switches between a main weapon, a staff that fires magic projectiles, and a water hose. That means every wave involves a choice between fighting enemies and putting out fires.
Later in the trailer, the King calls in animal allies, paints towers to match their color affinities, and fires area-of-effect special attacks into large groups of enemies. On-screen prompts such as “SPACE”, “E”, and “Y” suggest the game supports both keyboard and controller.
Scoring, unlocks, and leaderboards
Painted Kingdoms is built around score attack. When you win a run, the victory screen breaks your total into several categories. In the trailer’s example run, economy accounts for the largest share of the score.
| Score category | Value shown |
|---|---|
| Base score | 200 |
| Paint score | 234 |
| Time score | 421 |
| Economy score | 1410 |
| Multiplicator score | 0 |
| Highscore | 2265 (New Record!) |
That same run unlocked the Sword, which is described as a close-combat weapon. Wins also unlock new abilities, stamps, seals, and higher difficulty tiers. If an unlock has landed, the victory screen shows it under “New Unlocks:”.
You choose your setup before each run. The trailer’s setup screen uses a map called “The Three Paint Wells” and shows several modifiers. Some modifiers make a run harder in exchange for a higher score.
| Modifier | Effect shown |
|---|---|
| Diamond Wall | Painted diamonds redirect or block foes and fires |
| Commander | Buildings +30%, King -10% |
| Crumbling Economy | All building and upgrade costs +1, +20% score |
| Tortoise | Enemies -30%, +20% score |
The Diamond Wall description also warns that you can lock yourself in by accident. Each setup has its own challenges: reach a score of 10, reach 2500, reach 10000, and win with that setup. Seals add a bonus score, shown at 30% in the trailer. Scores are posted to global Steam leaderboards, and the board in the footage shows Jean-Michel in first place with 10000.
The trailer closes on a “Demo Available” card and a prompt to wishlist the game on Steam. Hectiq lists Painted Kingdoms as coming soon to PC, and no launch date has been confirmed yet.
