King’s Bounty II returns to its 30-year roots
October 11, 2021The original King’s Bounty was a 1990 role-playing wonder. Designed by Jon Van Caneghem and published by New World Computing, that old computer game did much to shape many of the formative design elements that would go on to become foundational pillars of what it meant to be a turn-based strategy RPG. Van Caneghem would go on to use the framework of the King’s Bounty design to create the Heroes of Might and Magic series.
But it took nearly 20 years before another King’s Bounty game was released, and it wasn’t a direct sequel. Instead, King’s Bounty: The Legend was a spiritual sequel that gave birth to its own run of titles that hit from 2007 through to 2014.
It wasn’t until this year, though, that the original classic received its first official sequel. With King’s Bounty II, developers 1C Entertainment looked to not just continue that original piece of influential design, but expand the game’s approach to include a more modern perspective and open-world landscape to explore.
We spoke with 1C Entertainment CEO Nikolay Baryshnikov about the design decisions that drove this return to a 30-year-old property, what the studio hopes to accomplish, and the sort of inspirations it drew from when creating the sprawling tactical role-playing game.
To read the rest of this interview, which first ran on Sept. 30, 2021, visit UnrealEngine.
