One must also be wary about expanding their dungeon too quickly. While enemies can’t cut through fortified walls, they can definitely cut through raw dirt as easily as you can. Unless you’ve got some self-contained gem stash (which will bring you infinite money so long as you keep mining it), then your dungeon is gonna hafta open up somewhere. Why not be prepared? A nice labyrinthine entry way is a good touch, as are nice, heavy doors.
The walls here might as well be made out of cake. It’s time for a fix!
Ah, much better.
The controls here aren’t great. For one, you rotate and zoom using keyboard commands. Strangely, this game decided to only utilize a single mouse button. In possession mode, you use the arrow keys to move around, rather than the WASD standard. also, the game’s native 320×200 resolution is a little bothersome for a game with so much detail going on at any time (I’ll show you in a second). There are mods out there (namely, different executables) that let you run in D3D mode and take advantage of some supremely high resolutions. Also, good luck with that.
While you’re out exploring, you’re bound to come across these little floating cubes. Claim the ground below it and you get the bonus.
YAR, THAR B TREASUR THAR.
Building bridges over boiling lava = good idea.
Eventually, you’re gonna hafta reach out and touch someone. Your Warlocks have researched everything they can in the Library (which disappears if you try to sell the space afterward, a cruel lesson learned), your troops have trained up, and your gold supply is running low. Combat is, again, rather hands off. Once your imps have claimed an area near baddies, you can then drop your minions into proximity and let them do the heavy lifting. This encourages a mix of minion/imp deployment as you need the latter to keep deploying the former closer to the enemy. Battles consist of a lot of yelling, including clever catcalls your baddies use to lure enemies.
In some missions, you’ll merely need to beat down a band of roaming heroes, but many are going to pit you against other keepers. Against human foes, you’ll eventually need to face the Lord of the Land while you’ll need to take out some dungeon hearts in the case of the latter. While I made it pretty far in this game many years ago, neither of these elements presented a greater difficulty, instead, it was the penalties thrown on you that made the game murderously difficult at times.
Building the army, watching my precious gold flow away training these grunts.
Getting a leg up, examining an enemy’s dungeon with a spell.
One huge aspect of the interface that I love that hasn’t carried over to other games is the notification column. Seen below, as news rolls in about your dungeon, your creatures, battles abroad, etc., it slides down along the UI. Important stuff has an exquisite, vibrating glow. I really wish more games used it. (Notifications about fights lingered until dismissed, though, even with combatants no longer listed.)
This facility is here for legitimate reasons. I swear.
The string cheese you see in this region floating around my dungeon is actually a clever distraction that killed more than a few imps. The elaborate chamber on the right was host to the Lord of the Land while my real villain was the keeper hidden in the top left there.
Cry ‘havoc’! And let slip the dogs of war! It’s a colorful mess at times, so perhaps it’s for the better that you’re not handling the micromanagement here.
I don’t… I… hrm.
On top of a dungeon heart now, about to lay these punks to WASTE!
Go. Here. Go! Here! HERE! GO HERE!
The heart shrinks as you begin to wail on it. Almost there, and…
THAT’S RIGHT! WHO WINS? I WIN! THE WINNER FOREVER!!!!!
So once you’ve gone through all that, defeated the other bad guys and saved the day, you get to press the Spacebar (?) to complete your mission and are immediately greeted by the Molyneux Standard(TM) absurd list of stats the game keeps track of (or fakes, but we’ll pretend they’re real).
I swear I’d told more than that…
Even with an epic photo essay, it’s hard for me to project the incredible charm and ingenuity this game has that, amazingly, no one has dared to replicate. It stood between two discrete eras of gaming and worked its best to bridge the gap. This game recently popped up on GOG.com and you can have it for (as of this writing) a whopping $5.99. If you’re up for a crazy special game that’s uniquely humorous and don’t mind the jank that fourteen years of technological progress has done away with, you owe it to your self to delve into these dungeons.
Don't Keep This a
Secret, Share It