Update: The headline originally described the game as "Chris Avellone's Pathfinder: Kingmaker," but Avellone has clarified that while he has "assisted" on the game's development with narrative and companion writing as a narrative designer, he is not in any kind of leadership position.
"While appreciating the kudos, Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a group effort of teams at Owlcat and Paizo with assistance from me (I'm neither Project Director nor Lead Writer)," Avellone explained. "To say that this work is all mine implies a role I don't have and does a disservice to the hard-working team at Owlcat, who have been very cool to work with. I wouldn't want this article header to misrepresent my role and diminish theirs."
For the record, the creative director on Pathfinder: Kingmaker is Alexander Mishulin, whose credits include Etherlord, Nightwatch, Heroes of Might and Magic 5, and Blitzkrieg 2; the lead producer and head of Owlcat Games is Oleg Shpilchevsky, who previously worked on HoMM5 and Allods Online.
Original story:
The isometric RPG Pathfinder: Kingmaker was a big success on Kickstarter last year, drawing in nearly double its $500,000 goal. That reflects the popularity of the Pathfinder RPG, a pencil-and-paper RPG published by Paizo, and also the participation of—who else?—Chris Avellone, who is working with Russian studio Owlcat Games on the project.
Today Owlcat announced another big-name partnership, this time with Deep Silver, which has signed up to publish and distribute the game. "We have ambitious plans for Pathfinder: Kingmaker. We want to reach out to the maximum number of players across the globe, making our brand easily accessible, maintaining quality and doing right by the fanbase," Owlcat boss Oleg Shpilchevsky said. "Working with Deep Silver ensures we can step up our retail marketing and benefit from the unique experience offered with Koch." (Deep Silver is a division of Koch Media.)
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is set in the "dangerous and turbulent" Stolen Lands, and will feature both known and new characters, locations, enemies, and adventures. Players will also have to take on the challenges of founding and ruling a kingdom, which Owlcat said will go beyond the simple stronghold-building feature seen in other RPGs: "Each kingdom will be a living thing shaped by alignment, choices, allies and the hero’s ability to lead his or her people."
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is slated to come out this year, and it has a website you can poke at up on owlcatgames.com.
