GamerEscape

This week at E3 2019, Rebellion announced Evil Genius 2– a direct sequel to the 2004 lair builder that puts you in control of running your own evil organization.

We had a chance to see an early build of the game in action. In Evil Genius 2, you have the choice of selecting one of four geniuses to play your campaign with including Maximilian, and Red Ivan.

The ultimate goal of each campaign is to build-up your lair and complete a doomsday device. How you get there however, depends on a number of factors. After selecting your character, you then get to choose where your evil lair is going to be located. You’ll have a different cover operation, a different amount of floors you can build on, and a different overall shape of your base. In the demo we saw, we were using the island lair, which had a casino as a cover.

As you build your lair, recruit minions, and work on your doomsday weapon, you might be visited by the Forces of Justice. These are special agents that will infiltrate your lair. Depending on the agent, they might be easy or hard to spot. The agent in our demo was disguised as a normal minion, however, they were running around the base, and also had a holster on them which made them stand out from the rest of your work force.

In the lair you can build a variety of traps to help kill the invaders. In the trailer, and in our demo, we saw a large fan blow the agent through a laser grid before placing them right over a shark trap. There will also be other traps available such as the Venus Spytrap.

Building is also easier than ever in Evil Genius 2. When building a lair, you’re not restricted by just big, square rooms. You can make the room any shape you want. The goal of the development team was that no matter what kind of room you made, or what shape it’s in, it will look good. Additionally, they mentioned that you can blend rooms. You can have a room in a room if you want, or your whole base could just be one room- it’s not recommended of course, but it’s an option for players.

Evil Genius 2 is set to release next year in 2020.