Age of Wonders 4, which launched on May 2, 2023, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, has lived up to expectations. The turn-based 4X game is currently sitting on a score of 83 on Metacritic as well as a ‘Very Positive’ rating on Steam, having received praise both from critics and the public.
Triumph Studios’ Lennart Sas, game director for Age of Wonders 4, told GLHF in an interview that “we are really happy. This has been the biggest Age of Wonders launch in history, in all its 25 years.”
Published by Paradox Interactive and developed by Triumph, Age of Wonders 4 manages to stay true to the series’ roots and innovate at the same time, especially in regards to allowing players to role-play their faction and adapt their playstyle to be less violent and aggressive.
“The difficulty when you make a sequel is always: to what degree do you stick to the roots and listen to your core audience, and to what degree do you innovate,” Sas said. “Every developer making a sequel has to make a call there.”
In the worst case scenario, a developer can lose their core audience if they stride too far from the previous games, he explained. However, there is also the danger of a brand becoming stagnant, so developers constantly have to balance those two aspects.
During the creation of Age of Wonders 4, this was on the team’s mind all the time. They looked at older entries into the series and determined a couple of core features they wouldn’t touch, as they are “the pillars of what makes this game, the reason why it ever came to popularity.” Aside from this core, though, everything was possible – and some of the changes were “quite radical,” Sas said.
Triumph would then prototype these ideas and get them into the hands of some hardcore fans of the series, “who are often our worst critics.”
Sas continued: “And then we can say ‘okay, if they didn’t entirely hate it, then maybe with these new features we can attract a broader audience.’”
The focus on customization in Age of Wonders 4, which allows players to create their own rulers and factions to play with, has been one of the big hits among players – it was also a result of the team being bold and correctly weighing the risks in the above context: “We knew that some of our core players from Age of Wonders 1 would hate it, because they’re all about the lore. They like fixed factions. But we also knew that a lot of people would love it, right? So that balance is a tough call. You can’t please all the people all the time.”
In this case, Triumph Studios certainly managed to make the right call – the clamorous reception speaks for itself.
Written by Marco Wutz on behalf of GLHF.
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