Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 devs wanted negative feedback during playtests after deciding players should initially “feel extremely weak”: “Then the validation of gaining strength feels earned”

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It’s never fun for game creators to get negative feedback during testing, but the team behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 actually saw it as a good thing. It meant they were successfully making the historical role-playing game as challenging and realistic as they intended.

During playtesting, some players made a mistake at the beginning of a game and were immediately arrested, which led to negative feedback. However, according to Warhorse lead designer Prokop Jirsa, the team intentionally designed it that way, and decided to keep it despite the initial reaction.

The developers intentionally start the game with a very weak player character. This is to make the feeling of becoming stronger feel truly rewarding. Jirsa recalls being hesitant to embrace this slower, more deliberate approach, as it goes against the trend in many other games that prioritize instant gratification.

The positive reception to the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance in 2018 reassured Warhorse Studios. According to Jirsa, there was internal debate about their design choices. They questioned whether focusing on challenging survival elements – even taking away basic comforts like a place to sleep at the start – was the right approach.

Jirsa believes players are open-minded. Difficult games can definitely find an audience, as demonstrated by FromSoftware’s success with titles like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, which appealed to a much wider audience than initially expected.

He thinks truly new ideas have a lot of promise and, with some development, could become widely popular.

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2025-12-16 00:40