Warhorse Studios

A Czech studio with an unusual ambition

Warhorse Studios is a Czech developer based in Prague. It was founded on 25 July 2011 by Daniel Vávra, formerly a writer and designer at 2K Czech, and Martin Klíma, previously a producer at Bohemia Interactive. The pair announced the studio openly rather than quietly, and the pitch was unusual from the start: a large role-playing game set in a real historical period, built by an independent team in Central Europe.

That pitch set the studio apart from its local peers. Czech development had a strong tradition in strategy and simulation, but not in the kind of open-world role-playing game Warhorse wanted to make. Choosing the Holy Roman Empire as a setting rather than a fantasy world meant the team could not lean on familiar monsters or magic, and it committed the studio to research as a core production task rather than a finishing touch.

Building Kingdom Come: Deliverance

The studio's first game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, arrived in February 2018 and put the player in the role of a commoner in early fifteenth-century Bohemia. Its selling point was historical grounding: real places, real factions and a combat system built around medieval weapon handling rather than the faster, more forgiving styles common to the genre. Reviewers treated its ambition and its roughness as two sides of the same project.

The game was funded in part through crowdfunding, which gave the studio an audience before release and tied its reputation to delivering what it had promised. That relationship shaped how Warhorse talks about its work. The team presents itself as making a particular kind of game, historical and simulation-minded, rather than chasing the widest possible market, and it kept that framing through its second release.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is the studio's follow-up and its largest release. Steam lists Warhorse Studios as the developer with Deep Silver as publisher, and dates the game to 4 February 2025. It continues the story of the same protagonist in the same region, and Deep Silver's official page presents a Royal Edition bundling the base game with cosmetic kits and an expansion pass.

The expansion pass points to how the studio supports the game after launch. Deep Silver's page names three paid chapters, including Legacy of the Forge and Mysteria Ecclesiae, alongside smaller content for the same edition. The publisher's materials also carry awards, including a BAFTA Games win in March 2025 and editor's-choice or game-of-the-year recognition from several outlets, marking the sequel as the studio's breakout title.

The historical approach

What separates Warhorse from other role-playing studios is its use of history as a design constraint. The games are set in a specific place and year, populated with named historical figures and grounded in the politics of the period. Combat, armour and travel are modelled with an eye on how those things actually worked rather than on what makes combat feel fastest, and the result asks more of the player than most open-world games.

That choice has trade-offs. A historically grounded setting offers no dragons or spells to broaden the appeal, and the systems can be unforgiving, from saving mechanics to fatigue and food. In return the studio gets a world that feels specific rather than generic, and a point of view that is hard to copy. It is the clearest reason a mid-sized Czech team can compete with far larger developers in a crowded genre.

A studio built on one franchise

Like several of the teams it is compared with, Warhorse Studios has staked its reputation on a single series. It has released two games, both in the Kingdom Come world, and its public identity is bound up with that setting rather than with a house style that could move to other genres. For a studio of its size, that focus concentrates scarce resources on research and systems.

The risk is the same as the benefit. A franchise tied to one historical region and one character has a natural stopping point, and the studio would eventually have to extend the story past its logical end or build something new. Deep Silver's ongoing support for the second game, including a steady run of expansions, suggests the plan is to keep the world alive through content until the next full project is ready.

Quick facts

Founded: 25 July 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic, by Daniel Vávra and Martin Klíma. Background: Vávra worked at 2K Czech and Klíma at Bohemia Interactive before launching the studio. Focus: historically grounded open-world role-playing games. Headquarters: Prague. Owner: Plaion, the group formerly known as Koch Media, which acquired the studio in February 2019; Deep Silver, a Plaion label, publishes its games.

Key releases: Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the studio's first game, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, dated 4 February 2025 on Steam with Warhorse Studios as developer and Deep Silver as publisher. Deep Silver's page lists a Royal Edition with an expansion pass covering chapters such as Legacy of the Forge and Mysteria Ecclesiae, and notes a BAFTA Games win in March 2025.

Games

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

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