Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse Studios have admitted that they wished they had more time to polish the game before releasing it to the public.
Despite proving to be a hit with gamers so far, Kingdom Come has been criticised by many for the amount of bugs, and at times poor optimisation, that shipped with the title when it launched two weeks ago. Several patches have been released since which have attempted to fix a number of bugs, but they’re still the game’s biggest problem.
The issues haven’t stopped Kingdom Come: Deliverance from being a commercial success though with over a million copies being sold worldwide on all platforms in less than two weeks.
Speaking during Warhorse’s Weekly Torch Blog, it appears the bugs and lack of polish are something they are fully aware of and regret not being able to ship the game in a better state. In the blog post, Warhorse’s Martin Klima admits that the studio made their “share of poor decisions and blunders” in the run up to release.
When discussing comparisons that have been made between Kingdom Come and triple A games, Klima stated that the studio didn’t have the resources to create a triple A game, although they don’t view themselves as an indie game developer either. In his words, Kingdom Come is an attempt at bridging the two, an “indie game at heart – more hardcore, more demanding, more fierce – but with the visuals and production values of AAA game.”
“I don’t see KCD as competing with the likes of Assassin’s Creed or Shadow of War,” Klima said. “We simply don’t have resources to create a game like that. I don’t view us as an indie game either, though. The trend I see in ‘real’ AAA games, like the ones I mentioned above, is toward making games more and more forgiving, better suited to the most casual and absent-minded players; they are games that in effect are ‘playing themselves’. So, you have all those different markers, prompts and handy hints that you never have to think about what to do next.”
He continued, “This is not entirely wrong. I can see why the companies that make these games take this approach and obviously there is a demand for it, as evidenced by the sales of these games. On the other hand, we see a trend among indie games that are both more original and less forgiving, but because of limited budgets they have to go for a format that is somewhat simpler to develop for, e.g. many of them are 2D platformers or top-down scrollers.”
“KCD is an attempt of bridging the two: it is an indie game at heart – more hardcore, more demanding, more fierce – but with the visuals and production values of AAA game. I freely admit though that I wish we had more time to polish the game before the release, that’s what AAA game deserves.”
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.