Evil Genius 2 is an upcoming "lair builder" game that encourages players to step into the shoes of a supervillain, build a doomsday device, and take over the world. At a recent event, Game Rant got the chance to see a gameplay preview and speak with lead game designer Rich Edwards, who explained the game's inspirations, unique mechanics, and streamlined strategy/building features. With an end goal of conquering the entire earth, we were especially curious how players will be able to pursue their nefarious plots.
Evil Genius 2 is a follow-up to 2004's Evil Genius, a cult-classic base building game that was lauded for its great concept but may have fallen short on execution. Despite its bugs, flaws, and foibles, the original game had a loyal fan-base, and it's clear that the developers of the sequel still have love for the original 16 years later. Evil Genius 2 expands on building mechanics, making everything more streamlined, but keeps the "1960s Spy-fi" setting. For fans of classic Bond films and campy tales of international espionage, this game will definitely scratch an itch, but anyone who loves city-builders or base management games like Frostpunk should also be interested.
The most important part of taking over the world is building a secret lair to house a massive doomsday device. Each of the playable evil masterminds gets their own individual superweapon and story progression, but the core gameplay boils down to building a lair, filling it with minions, and working through upgrades. Edwards explained that Two Point Hospital, Frostpunk, and Rimworld are all gameplay inspirations, but that Evil Genius 2: World Domination strives to appeal to wider audiences with its gameplay and tone.
We’re not quite as grim as Frostpunk, but the idea that we’re giving you this one continuous playspace is absolutely central to our game...We allow you to build rooms wherever and however you want. If you want a barracks right in the middle of your mess hall, you can. We won’t throw up walls in front of you. We are proud of the building mechanics because that’s the core of the game that we want people to engage with.
With a win condition as ambitious as global conquest, we were curious about how many different ways players could approach that gargantuan task. Different playable geniuses have different specialties, from science focus to military intimidation or misdirection, as well as an individual story. Since there is a set narrative in place, we asked Edwards about player freedom.
We’re giving various goals, asking you to do certain things such as build a doomsday device, or infiltrate various organizations to bring down the world. But we are letting you do that at your own pace, so you decide when to move on to the next part. The forces of justice will always be there trying to stop you, so sometimes it will pay to take a bit of a back seat and disappear or lie low, but other times you might decide to push through as fast as possible because you already have their attention. Ultimately how you tackle that is down to you as the player...We give ample opportunities to upgrade everything if that’s what you want, but ultimately once you have conquered the world you have won, and the game ends there. Conquering the world is the final mountain to climb.
Even if the player takes a backseat and decides to take it easy for a bit, their minions will still be dutifully bustling to keep everything running. Edwards explained that they wanted to allow a high degree of depth in customization and gameplay, with multiple difficulty options and the ability to assign individual minions to particular tasks. However, it's not all about micromanagement.
One of the things we thought about was the 'shoot them you idiots' paradigm. We want you to feel that if you gave and order, it will get done. So, everything right out of the box just works. If you as the genius order a room to be built, if you have the minions, they will immediately run to do it, then within that you can go and tweak things more individually. You could go into the manager and follow an individual minion to figure out exactly what they are doing and choose a specialization, but even without that small scale management, it will still work.
Of course, for every evil villain, there is also a hero to stop them. The "forces of justice" will constantly be trying to take players down, and it seems they may get quite pernicious. While he wasn't ready to spill all of the details just yet, Edwards did suggest that there may also be especially persistent super agents that will come back again and again, worthy of being called an arch-nemesis by even the most powerful villains. This game, though, might just make it fun to root for the baddies for once.
Evil Genius 2 is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2021.