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Sadly, Samson, the new action-thriller game from one of the co-directors of the original Just Cause, had a rough launch earlier this month. Under-promoted and buggy, it's not looking great for the debut from Liquid Swords Games, and one of the central devs behind the Kingdom Come: Deliverance games can sympathize with the struggle.
On Twitter, Daniel Vávra, director of both Kingdom Come: Deliverance installments, shared his intrigue toward Samson. Not only was the Just Cause connection enough to draw him in, but it being a gorgeous looking crime game like Mafia, a series he worked on before delving into European history, he decided to give it a go.
"It really looks FAN-TAS-TIC!... and it’s a eurojank," he says in his post. Not the most inspiring review, quite in line with the Steam reviews, which are sitting on Mixed at the minute. He then provides insight based on the troubled production Samson's had.
Article continues belowI recently accidentaly came across some gameplay footage from a game called Samson. As the creator of Mafia, it naturally caught my attention, because it looks like Mafia! And it surprised me, cause It looks absolutely gorgeous, and nobody’s talking about it! WTF? Later I’ve… pic.twitter.com/oH0r0N5npkApril 28, 2026
"An indie development team, couldn’t find a publisher, layoffs, cutting back on the original plan, rushed self-publishing without advertising, bugs, a struggle for survival," he writes. "It could easily have happened to [Kingdom Come: Deliverance] as well."
This is all true. Back in mid-2025, layoffs took away half the team at Liquid Swords, and what was planned to be a gritty action-RPG became a more contained, roguelike-inspired project. There were multiple publisher rejections, with one unnamed company apparently turning down the game five times.
Things were so tight, the release was more about necessity than it being truly finished. Vávra actually went through a more idealized version of this process for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, since he led the initial pitch and eventually secured enough partners and funding to found Warhorse Studios in 2011.
This industry can be fickle and difficult and unpredictable, and Vávra believes we'll see more of this rather than less in the near future. "For the money, it’s not bad. Give it a try. It looks really great," he says of Samson. "But I have a feeling that given the number of announced titles, we’ll be hearing a few more stories like this this year."
