Growing up in the South of England, like I did, history is all around you. Castles and forts, both preserved and ruined, litter the countryside. I, like many children, have fond memories visiting such places and imagining the great battles that were fought there.

All this came flooding back when I saw a hands-off demo of Chronicles Medieval recently at Gamescom. An upcoming action strategy game set within the Hundred Years’ War that allows players to venture across Europe at a time when great armies fought fiercely over territory, it seemed immediately obvious to me it’s the sort of thing that could only have been made by the most enthusiastic of history fans. And it turns out I was right.

Sam Millen, lead producer at Raw Power Games, as well as senior game designer Gareth Bourn, were keen to talk me through the upcoming release. “We have many members of the team who are history nerds,” Millen explained when I asked about the amount of research needed to create Chronicles Medieval. The pair took great pride in scrolling across the game’s rendition of Southern England, taking me to different towns and villages scattered across its landscape. These settlements are accurately placed based on where they would have been in real life, and their size likewise starts off at the scale they were at the time. There are 209 regions in total, with those yet undiscovered shrouded in a parchment-style fog of war.

Raw Power Games’ eye for authenticity extends to Chronicles Medieval’s battles. A knight’s coat of arms matches that of their real-life counterparts, while the weapons they wield and the armour they wear are equally true to the time. I’m told the team worked with historians to get this right, and even have an in-house HEMA (historical european martial arts) expert.

This is all well and good, but previous games that have attempted to pay homage to real-world historical events have sometimes been so focused on authenticity, the fun factor has been lost in the process. Bourn describes this as a “fine balance to be struck”, but believes the team has managed to strike it nonetheless.

“It’s very important to make sure we’re representing this time period accurately, so silly things like using a lance on foot aren’t possible,” he says. “So there are some limitations we’ve put in place to keep that authenticity alive, while stretching it to allow for more atypical choices that weren’t necessarily prevalent.”

Battles themselves play out as a blend of two genres: tactical strategy and third-person action RPG. You begin with a birds-eye view of the skirmish, able to place units freely within a starting section of the battlefield. You can also pre-programme manoeuvres that play out once the fight begins. In the demo I saw, for instance, cavalry were commanded to ride around the opposing army and flank them from behind.

Once this planning section ends, the action switches to third-person and you’re placed in control of your player character. Here you can further command units within the slowed time, telling them to shift positions or raise their spears for incoming charges while the fight proceeds slowly around you. Then, once the action begins in earnest, you’re able to take part personally. This could be holding out your weapon while riding your horse for fast-paced strikes, or getting off your horse entirely for more intimate brawls.

This, according to Millen, represents the duality of the commander in such battles. Real-world historical battles ultimately inspired the team at Raw Power who wanted the player to both command from a distance and get into the mud with their troops.

And progression in Chronicles Medieval further supports the fantasy of growing as a prominent commander. You start off bringing peasants and martial novices into battle with a few coins, and your own skills with weaponry and leadership are limited at first too. But, as you continue to win battles, your newfound knowledge of fighting provides new attacks you can personally use in combat, while units that survive multiple battles gain improvements to their cohesion – and their formations become tighter and increasingly effective.

One little feature I love, and that seems to perfectly encapsulate Chronicles Medieval’s balance between historical accuracy and fun, is the impact of a cavalry charge, paired with a mechanic Millen calls “horse refusal”. Here, a unit of knights on horseback carrying lances can, as you’d expect, cause significant damage. Once the charge is finished, though, they have to pull themselves and their steeds out of the mess of bodies and bloodshed to regroup and charge again. Exactly what you’d expect from a game aiming to provide that warring medieval fantasy.

But what about that “horse refusal”? Battle scholars and equidae experts note that, sometimes, your horse just doesn’t fancy rushing into the fray. And so there’s the ever-present possibility that one horse in a unit will pull away from the climactic clash – which can happen in-game. It’s a little thing, but combined with myriad other small touches, it helps make Chronicles Medieval a rich playground for those looking for flavourful authenticity.

In Bourn’s mind, it’s these little details that make all the difference: “They’re there because they’re fun and they give advantages to the player, but if you’re really into this stuff you’ll be like, ‘They refused, that’s so cool!’ You can see a reflection of how people have lived in the world before you arrive. Seeing cheap mercenaries have less cohesion than trained nobles, that’s the sort of thing that brings life and colour to the world.

“It is a rich tapestry. The feudal system was deeply interesting in terms of vassals, barons, counts, dukes, and laws … Reflecting all these things through systems and features just brings everything to life.”