After a recent gameplay reveal event, Game Rant got the chance to speak with Rich Edwards, lead designer for Evil Genius 2: World Domination. This upcoming "lair-building" game follows in the footsteps of the original cult classic Evil Genius, as players build a sprawling secret base from which to launch a campaign of world conquest. The gameplay reveal showed off a cartoony, 1960's "spy-fi" theme, multiple playable evil masterminds, and an active building system that looks uniquely fun to watch play out.
Our interview focused on Evil Genius 2: World Domination's gameplay and design inspirations, the unique setting and theme, and a few gameplay elements that weren't directly shown off in the preview. Some parts of this interview transcript have been edited for clarity and brevity.
GR: Base-building games like this are not super common these days. What are some of your gameplay influences?
RE: The first thing I will say is- we are a lair builder, which is much more evil sounding than base builder. But, there’s two immediate things that come to mind. One is Two Point Hospital. That game has helped us really shape what the lair builder would look like. Another game that I would reference is something along the lines of a Frostpunk or a sort of Rimworld. I know we’re going a little more broad appeal than that: we have a sort of lair building where we’re trying to bring in as many people as possible, and 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.
GR: Clearly this is inspired by classic Sean Connery Bond films and things like that, but are there any other film and movie references that might not be so immediate?
RE: I think it’s fair to say that if it’s 1960’s spy-fi we’ve watched it or read it. Things like Mission Impossible or the original Avengers, with all those international espionage antics. So absolutely, all those things have played different influences on us as a dev team. I could list films all day. Sometimes we sit down and talk about films that we’ve seen just to share ideas. One thing that I was thinking a lot about recently was The Man from U.N.C.L.E. because that does hit a nice line between- it was that original style but the modern film has updated that and managed to maintain some of that fun.
GR: In the preview, you focused so much on players being able to do what they want, build what they want, but you also mentioned sort of a narrative for each different genius that you can play as. Is there a story for each, or do they just play differently?
RE: Absolutely, there is a unique campaign for each evil genius. Once you’ve chosen your character you’re going to be following their campaign from the humble beginnings of buying a tropical island right through to conquering the world or potentially dying in the attempt.... We’re giving various goals: asking you to do things such as build a doomsday device, infiltrate 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.
GR: So you can lie back and doodle around, or try to speedrun world domination?
RE: You could. You as the genius can take a backseat, but your minions would still be working flat out to work on your goals.
GR: Is there gameplay after you conquer the world? Can you keep playing afterwards and upgrade everything?
RE: 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.
GR: How did you balance difficulty in the game keeping in mind that people might play at different paces?
RE: We want to make sure that the player has fun no matter what they do, so we have a lot of difficulty options. If it’s what you want, you can crank up the difficulty, but we also want to make sure that you have the premier villain experience, and we are keeping our focus so that your dreams as an evil genius can be acted out.
GR: For every evil villain there is usually a hero. In the trailers there’s plenty of generic agents that come after you, but is there ever a particularly pernicious agent? Do you ever get your Bond?
RE: A good villain will always try to keep their plans under wraps until the last minute when they start gloating, so I can’t reveal everything yet. What I can say is that there are going to be super agents, and there may be particularly problematic agents who keep coming back for you time and time again.
GR: Somebody who you really would want to tie to a table and shoot a laser at.
RE: Absolutely, yes.
GR: Anything you’re particularly proud of? A favorite part of the game?
RE: As an enormous fan of Evil Genius 1, I really love that Red Ivan is back as a playable villain. That’s why he’s been one of the focuses of the demo that we showed you. Ivan absolutely is a character in his own right, so I want to give him the spotlight he deserves.
As a fan of base builders and this genre in general, I am really proud of our building mechanics. 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 do that. 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.
GR: I notice that you have these very clean UIs and simple interface, but there’s also a lot of depth there. It’s not a light game. How do you balance it to be both accessible and also deep?
RE: 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. We want everything to work on a surface level. 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 if you desire. But, even without that small scale management, it will still work.
GR: So you can micromanage if you want, but you don’t necessarily have to.
RE: Exactly. We want to make sure you’re not forced to manage every minion within your lair. You can’t go and give individual orders to each minion, but you can go into a room and say “do this now” so that somebody will immediately do it.
GR: In the preview I saw that you can select how many guards, mercenaries, or scientists you want, and the minions will automatically train up to maintain that number. Is there a mechanic for hiring on new minions?
RE: If your lair is equipped to handle more, then yes, there will be a steady trickle. But there is no automatic screening process, so if you want to go a bit deeper you can screen them yourself and then… throw them into an incinerator if they’re not good. I was going to say "fire them," but let's be honest, you're a villain and you're just going to have them dealt with.
GR: Ah, a literal firing.
RE: Yes, quite literally fired in an incinerator.
GR: Is there anything else you want to talk about?
RE: I just can’t wait to see this in the hands of players, and see what sorts of lairs people come up with.
[END.]
Evil Genius 2 is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2021.