The original Evil Genius may never have reached the same acclaim as Rollercoaster Tycoon, Age of Empires and Theme Hospital but it remains a much-loved title among those who played it.
And with the announcement of Evil Genius 2 release date, almost 15 years later, fans have the chance to see the game brought up to speed.
And from what the Daily Express Online saw at E3 2019, the hopes of those gamers are in safe hands at Rebellion.
Evil Genius 2: World Domination is being treated as a sequel rather than a remaster, meaning that the development team have more wiggle room when it comes to making changes.
But instead of going down the route of a complete reboot, Rebellion has chosen to enhance, rather than replace the original gameplay.
This has been done to great effect in recent years, with titles like XCOM 2 and Age of Empire 2 Definitive Edition, paving the way.
The good news is that Evil Genius 2 is going include all the things that made the first one great and has a release date set for 2020.
You can build a massive underground layer, filled with nefarious tools to be used in your quest for world domination.
But as this is 2019, gamers are going to have bigger and better options to choose from.
Instead of building a hotel and casino as a distraction, fans will be able to integrate their hotel front as part of their layer setup.
This means that Do-gooder agents trying to thwart your plans will be able to snoop in ways where they won’t need to break into your base directly.
Rebellion has also confirmed that Evil Genius 2 is a single-player experience, meaning there won’t be able any multiplayer options included.
Bases will take a smaller space on your island; however, they can now be built in layers, meaning you can dig down, rather than having to expand outwards.
Other gameplay aspects are being modified to help improve the overall experience.
Fans will be able to use an incinerator to rid themselves of body bags and evidence of wrong-doing, rather than having to build bigger and bigger ice rooms.
The demo we watched confirmed that much of what made EG so good would be staying the same.
Fans won’t need to perform acts of infamy to recruit special soldiers and scientists any more, another tweak that fans will be able to appreciate.
There is still much we don’t know about Evil Genius 2, including how a lot of the World Map will function.
Here’s the latest from Rebellion, who revealed in a new statement today: “Now, before you get too excited and start furiously drawing up your blueprints for a Gravity Disruptor 2.0, development only began this Spring and is still at a very, very early stage.
“We’re currently fleshing out the tech that will make Evil Genius 2 a reality. This will be the first real-time strategy game built in our in-house engine Asura, after all, so we need to do a little bit of extra work under the hood before we expand the team, nail down gameplay design and go into full production.
“That said, you may well be asking why it’s taken us a while to get to this point. As some of you may remember, we were very close to announcing this project several years ago. Back then, our plan was to crowd-fund a new Evil Genius PC game and we made a series of steps to launching a campaign.
“So why didn’t we go ahead with it? Firstly, we were in the middle of a big transition into becoming our own publisher and we needed to put resources into the projects that became Zombie Army Trilogy, Battlezone on PSVR and Sniper Elite 3 & 4.
“Secondly, we decided crowd-funding wasn’t the way we wanted to go. After the growing success of the Sniper Elite series and other Rebellion games IP, we started to feel it wasn’t fair to ask fans to fund a new game if we didn’t need them to!
“With some big projects now out the door and being enjoyed by gamers worldwide, we feel like now is the time to return to the world of Evil Genius.”