Exclusive Interview With RDBK Studios (Developers of Renown): Crowdfunding, Game Progress, Vision, & More

One of the most exciting new games coming in 2025 is the early access launch of Renown, an open-world PVP medieval survival title from the indie development team, RDBK Studios.  As an official BisectHosting partner, we had the opportunity to speak with RDBK Studios about Renown in an exclusive interview covering their phenomenal fundraising efforts, progress on Renown so far, and vision for the game’s future!

Exclusive Q&A With RDBK Studios

Crowdfunding as an Indie Developer

Renown has run multiple extremely successful crowdfunding campaigns, raising over AU$600,000 across the development of the game - what was that journey like?

It’s absolutely incredible. The development of Renown has been, and continues to be, one of the best experiences of my life and also the most stressful. I knew when we started that the idea of the game was solid, but I had no idea that there would be this many people willing to put their hope and money into us to make it a reality. It’s been a very long road, much longer than I think any of us expected. When you have so many people cheering you along, it does make it easier and it also makes you work harder. We want to make sure we can provide an enjoyable experience to all those who believed in us along the way, and we will stop at nothing to deliver on that to the best of our ability. What details would you most credit your success to with this campaign? I think at the end of the day it’s the concept, it’s a game that a lot of people have been wanting. The entire reason why this even started was that Charlie, the other co-founder of RDBK Studios, and I both had been waiting for this game to be made by someone. After years of no one doing it, we just said, “Well, we may as well do it ourselves.” I think that passion comes through to people. Secondly, it was all the help we had along the way. Early on some amazing videos were made showcasing the game. Without their help getting it in front of people’s eyes, I don’t think we would be anywhere near where we are today.

As a very strong example of fundraising in indie game development, what advice would you give to other developers?

Ask for help, you’d be surprised how willing people are to provide their insight and expertise. This includes everything from building a business, developing the game, and marketing the game. Over the years, we have had so many people give us hours of their time to just sit and talk through questions and concerns. And in some cases, as I mentioned before, create content and get the word out about what we are making. Find content creators you believe would love your game and reach out to them. All it takes is one kind person to give you some of their time, and it could skyrocket your game to the masses. Just be kind, respectful, and honest, and most of all, make sure you spend some time looking into the content they make. There’s nothing worse than someone reaching out to you to ask for help and they haven’t spent even one hour just reading up on what you have done or what you create. That kind of respect really comes through to people.

Renown & Game Development

What should players expect from their first experiences in Renown?

I think they should expect a challenge. Renown is a game with quite a high skill ceiling, and as such, new players should definitely expect to spend some time learning the combat before putting themselves at too much risk. We recommend spending some time in the safe zone dueling other players and then heading off to the east of the map where it’s a little safer. The west is definitely where you go to find the higher-tier loot and, as such, much more skilled players.

What areas of Renown are you most excited for players to experience come launch day?

There’s so many areas of the game that I’m excited for people to experience, but I think the one I’m truly excited for, and one that’s unique to our game, is the ability to interact with players in a way that doesn’t have you being killed instantly from 100s of metres away. Most survival games you play, you are always at risk of being shot. In Renown, you could be 20 feet away from a person having a conversation and at any point you could run off and never have been at risk of being killed if you were smart and didn’t let them get too close. This fact really allows your in-game experiences and social interactions to be much more interesting and in-depth. It helps people build stories.

What do you think will be the biggest surprise to players when they play the game?

Renown is not trying to do anything overly unique in its systems; it truly is just a mixture of our favourite games, combining two worlds that have not seen much light together. We hope people feel at home in some ways. We have heard that a lot of people get nostalgic of Legacy Rust playing Renown, which is honestly the biggest compliment they could give. Being a die-hard PVP survival player myself, I understand people’s worries when trying yet another survival game. You kind of expect it to not give you the feeling you hope it will. I’d love for the surprise of our players to be that it does actually scratch that itch we all have for a survival game.

Did you have any particular inspirations for the game?

Renown is heavily and unapologetically inspired by my two favourite games, that is Rust Legacy and Chivalry 1. These games are still to this day the best experiences I have had in gaming hands down, and not much has even come close. I always was quite disappointed when a new survival game came out that skewed so far away from what I believed made Rust so great. We truly wanted to make the first Rust-like game, one that stays true to the design philosophies that make it so addicting, then combine it with a combat system that hasn’t been explored in this format before.

Which existing game audiences do you see having the greatest crossover potential with your game?

I think Renown appeals to anyone that likes PVP survival games. We are an odd bunch; if the word PVP and survival are together, we just have to try it just to see if it scratches the itch. Then of course players of Chivalry or Mordhau would definitely have a leg up with the combat system. Those are definitely our target audiences, though once we are able to introduce modding support, that audience will broaden drastically. We want Renown to be something that people can tweak to their liking and play the game the way they want it.

What upcoming features are you most excited to add to the game?

We have so many features we’d love to add to Renown. I won’t go through them all now because I’d be here all day, but just some of the highlights and top priorities are of course getting our horses back into the game. No one loves a running simulator, so that’s on the top of our list to get completed. The Renown system is also one of those we want to have in a working state ASAP. It’s the game’s namesake and one system I’m extremely excited for. How it will function will be that every action you take in Renown will be tracked, from your kills to how many trees you have chopped. All these stats will be on a leaderboard and it will be linked to cosmetics you can unlock. It will be a fantastic way to flex on other players. Usually survival games have no way to truly gauge how well you have done compared to others, and with this system you can. I even foresee this system being used to “win” a wipe, granting players points based on bases raided or raids defended would be a great way to add a competitive nature to each wipe. We also believe that modding support keeps games alive, so that’s pretty high up on that list as well. Everything on our roadmap are our goals straight after Early Access release, but into the future, we have a lot of extra plans. Even maybe an Age of Sail update would be amazing.

What do you feel have been the hardest challenges for the game’s development so far?

I think it’s everything that’s outside of the game that becomes the challenge. We love our job; we spend every waking moment thinking or working on it. Because of that, the rest of your life kind of gets pushed aside. Relationships and friendships can become strained. When you have been working on something for 4-5 years at ridiculous hours, there’s not much time for anything else. I think we are just looking forward to having more time to give to our family and friends. There’s of course challenges and issues every week developing the game, but that’s part of the enjoyment honestly. Overcoming those challenges is a very rewarding feeling.

What do you see for the future of Renown’s development?

I see a lot for the future of Renown. The current goal throughout development was always to create a strong foundation of a game, something that we can build on for years to come. We have always heavily believed in emergent gameplay and design. We want to see how the players interact with the systems we have provided and what they enjoy the most. This will allow us to make decisions as the game grows, facilitating our players’ wants. We of course have a bucketload of content and features we have planned, that we can't wait to get into the players hands. 

Is there anything else you’d like to say to potential players?

It’s probably been said a million times by indie studios, but it has to be said. We have big ambitions for Renown, and the EA release is just the first step on that road. Though at the end of the day, we are a small team of 4 just trying to create our dream game. There will be jank, there will be issues. I just hope you can see through those problems, enjoy what we have so far, and see the vision that we are trying to capture.