Dungeons - Preview Roundup

In Dungeons, players are tasked with creating insurmountable underground labyrinths as the Dungeon Lord. Using a variety of objects, powers, and enticing features, players create irresistible death traps for adventurers to explore and die in. With every adventurer you harvest, the more your gold and ‘Soul Energy’ tallies increase. Gold and Soul Energy accumulation is imperative for increasing your prestige through ‘Prestige Gimmicks’ (interesting arcane objects and elements heroes crave). The object of Dungeons is to be the envy of all other evildoers by becoming the ultimate dark lord of the dank and dingy through clever construction of cavernous confines.

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Once you have your gold and energy, you set about adding to your dungeon. You can tunnel through and unlock more minions or make a beeline for your various objectives. You can hang back and spruce up your dungeon, or you can concentrate on “harvesting” heroes. While in the main campaign you’re pretty set on your objectives, luckily there is a sandbox mode where you can mess about and be evil whatever way you choose.

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The monsters you can acquire are again quite the mix of old school Dungeon Keeper and new ideas. Early missions see you playing host to spiders and imps, while later on you'll find wererats and huge fire angels. Part of Dungeon Keepers excitement was bringing new creatures into your realm, and it appears that Dungeons will follow suit. However, rather than fulfilling objectives to make creatures appear, in Dungeons you instead go hunting for them by digging around and finding nests and graveyards.

Our stint with Dungeons has made us hungry for more, and we'll definitely be checking it out in full once the game lands sometime early this year. Online multiplayer is promised, along with a full customizable skirmish mode. If you enjoyed Dungeon Keeper, then this is definitely shaping up to be something you'll want to partake in.

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With heroes taking centre stage in your management affections, minions are very much consigned to the background. They don’t need fed, trained or faffed with and, while they are used to fight, Realmforge have made it clear that they aren’t the stars of the show and, instead, are more cannon fodder for the heroes than anything. Indeed, rather than a disembodied presence, the player can actually control their Dungeon Lord who has been described by Realmforge as ‘the most effective combat unit the player has’, so expect to get your own hands dirty when it comes time for a scrap.

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The gameplay is a mashup of RTS, RPG, tower defense, and even a little bit of Sims thrown in for good measure. On each level you’ll start with a basic dungeon layout and expand it from there. Then you’ll populate it with monsters, treasure, books, all the things a young growing hero needs. The heroes themselves trickle into your dungeon as NPCs, poking around at the cool demon pad you’ve set up.

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