I'm gonna say it again: March has been pretty sleepy for PC games. Apart from the lovely Loop Hero, and the still-unfolding Viking fun of Valheim, we don't have a whole lot upcoming, as I mentioned back in January.
This dry spell makes Evil Genius 2's March 30 release date stand out even more on the horizon. With two weeks to go, Rebellion (typically known for its third-person shooters Zombie Army and Sniper Elite) today revealed a substantial slab of footage for its cartoonish villain sim and tycoonish, Dungeon Keeper-style management game.
The footage is a pretty comprehensive summary of how Evil Genius 2 works. You design a sprawling lair that houses a few hundred replaceable minions and a handful of henchmen who advance your master scheme: world domination. The henchmen (unique, voiced lieutenant characters) are recruited from "the world stage," a global map of background missions that you send minions to complete. As you conduct this work, various heroes and agencies will poke your nose in your base and eventually meddle directly, sending saboteurs, soldiers, and other do-gooding glory-seekers to steal stuff, blow up parts of your base, and potentially KO your villain to end the campaign. Hope you built enough laser prisons for all of them.
The theme is pretty irresistible: there are so few games that have taken inspiration from The Incredibles and other "spy-fi" fiction, and still not enough that let us play as the bad guy or girl. It's worth noting that there is a boatload of footage of Evil Genius 2 over on Rebellion's YouTube channel. Personally I'm holding off on watching everything because I don't want to spoil which characters I'll stumble on in the campaign.
Along with this new video, Rebellion confirms that more post-launch stuff is on the way, both free and paid. "While the dev team is strictly focusing on launch right now, Rebellion can reveal a new campaign pack is planned for post-launch, featuring a new playable Genius, island lair and Force of Justice," says Rebellion. "Across other packs we’ll also introduce new henchmen, minion types, room types, traps, items and more. We’ll go into all of these in more detail shortly after launch, including the timings of various releases—so please stay tuned." As shown below, some of this stuff will take the form of a season pass.
I also got Rebellion to clarify the Evil Genius 2 launch timing on Steam:
- Evil Genius 2 will launch at 4pm BST on March 30
- That's 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern
- It's a 8.8 GB download, and a respectful 18 GB on your hard drive.
Evil Genius 2 is pre-orderable now in two editions—Deluxe and Standard—priced £54.99 / $59.99 / €59.99 and £34.99 / $39.99 / €39.99 respectively, not including the current 15 percent discount before release. You can learn more at evilgeniusgame.com.
