Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Introduces Barber Mode, and I’m Crossing My Fingers to Actually Play as a Barber

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is getting a major patch on 13th March, developers Warhorse have announced. It will enhance the bracingly mucky RPG with modding tools and a “trove of updates”, including what the devs ambiguously refer to as Barber Mode. Going by the promotional image they’ve knocked together, this is just a selection of beards and haircuts for protagonist Henry. But it is not yet 13th March, so let us dare to dream. Let us imagine that the update will let Henry become a barber, cutting a swathe through the innumerable fringes of 15th century Bohemia.

I had not realised till writing this post how much I want to play a game in which you play a travelling barber, perhaps departing each day from my salon to groom the magnates of the realm. A game in which I, Quiff Sideburn, Texturizer At Law, must carefully organise different sizes of scissors in my roll-out velvet barbering kit. A game in which my choice of do has a bearing upon international politics. In which I mull my own beard oil from juniper berries and slaughtered moles. In which I can recruit three side characters and form a barbershop quartet, then butcher them all because Quiff Sideburn is secretly Sweeney Todd.

A quick glance at Steam reveals that there is, very tentatively, such a thing as the “barber sim genre”. There’s the forthcoming Barber Party from Second Wind, for example, which is Overcooked except that you’re rounding necklines rather than plating the pasta. There’s Bizarre Barber for the VR crowd, in which you are a hairdresser who’s gotten their Diet Coke mixed up with the shampoo and is now hallucinating magic fish on a train platform. And there’s The Midnight Barber, a visual novel in which you coiffure werewolves, which is designed for ASMR but is also about a political revolution in Barcelona. The barber sim is a richly confusing genre. But alas, an underpopulated one. Mostly, that search term turns up games featuring BBQs, barbarians or women called Barbara.

Barbering would fit naturally into Deliverance 2. The game already lets you practice a range of medieval trades, from brewing to cooking to tanning and smithing. I’m pretty sure Henry’s smithing skills would translate naturally to giving Hans Capon a Pompadour – though this would of course be anachronistic, because that particular style is from 18th century France. See, I’m already an expert on hair. Don’t make me have carried out all this research for nothing, Warhorse. Don’t let me down on 13th March.