Turning a well-regarded PC game into a Facebook/Zynga game is something I can well imagine an evil genius doing - I can almost see them now, stroking a cat and cackling malevolently as the microtransactions roll in. Which is not to say that Evil Genius Online - a free-to-play social game heading to Facebook and Zynga.com - will be such a game, but rather that I'm much more excited about the "fully featured" Evil Genius 2, which has just been outed on the Rebellion blog .
Evil Genius, you will probably remember, is a Dungeon Keeper-esque strategy game putting you in the role of a James Bond-style supervillain - we gave it 84% (UK mag), and 88% (US mag) back in the day. Rebellion bought the series from the defunct Elixir Studios back in 2006, and they've been sitting on it since then, at least until the reveal of Evil Genius Online earlier this month. Now, the Sniper Elite devs have revealed their plans to make a proper follow-up, which is going to happen "soon".
An open letter to the Evil Genius community gave the following details. “We've always wanted to make a fully-featured PC follow-up. We've taken concepts for an Evil Genius sequel to publishers before but we weren't able to secure the funding we needed. However since then, we've looked into alternative ways to get this game funded and created. We are going to make this happen. And it's going to be soon.
“We've been watching the Evil Genius community for some time now, and we're sorry that we couldn't tell you earlier about our plans. If anything, your enthusiasm over the last couple of weeks has galvanized our efforts.
“In the next few days a key member from our Oxford studio will be in touch. They want to engage with the EG community and get you involved in the first steps we take towards the next Evil Genius game on PC.”
If you consider yourself a member of the Evil Genius community, you might want to make your presence known.
Ta, VG247 .
