I'm sure no video game developers enjoy hearing negative feedback during playtests, but for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 developers, unhappy customers were a happy sign they were making the historical RPG as punishing as they'd wanted.
"We had playtests where some players started a game, did something wrong, immediately got arrested, and gave negative feedback," Warhorse lead designer Prokop Jirsa tells GamesRadar+. "We had the strength to say, 'Yes, that's what we want.'"
"We want the player at the beginning to feel extremely weak," he explains, "because then the validation of gaining strength feels earned." Jirsa remembers it feeling "scary" to commit to this style of slow progression – opposing the culture of instant gratification Warhorse thinks has infected other games.
But the success of the first Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 in 2018 helped ease some of Warhorse's fears. "Even though," Jirsa says, "there were many discussions [asking] 'Are we really going the right way? Are we really into these survival elements, do we really want to take everything from the player at the beginning? Even their place to sleep?'"
Still, Jirsa knows audiences are versatile. It isn't impossible for hard games to find a loving home, and he gives FromSoftware as an example: "With Dark Souls and Elden Ring, they took something that was very niche to the mainstream audience and were very successful."
"I honestly believe there's big potential for original ideas that, if they were given a chance to be polished, could reach mainstream," he says.
