A new strategy game, Dungeons, is being released for the PC through Steam. The player takes on the role of a Dungeon Master. No, not the traditional D&D-type dungeon master. Most of us have played the Diablo games, right? Crawling through dungeons, hacking down enemies, and picking up that shiny new weapon or armor piece on your quest to destroy Diablo is always fun. Dungeons is a lot like that, but instead of playing as the hero and slashing through the enemies, you’re playing the evil bastard that’s creating the traps and throwing the baddies at the hero.
The game is being produced by Kalypso Media, a German company most famous for making games that you’ve never bothered to play. No, seriously, take a look at the games that they have made. It just seems like they snag up IPs and make sequels to games that the originators didn’t want to make anymore. Galactic Civ 2, Airline Tycoon 2, Tropico 3, The Political Machine 2008 (WTF?), The Patrician 4, and a bunch of other games that don’t even register a blip on the “I really want to play that” radar. That’s part of what makes Dungeons so surprising. Instead of taking a dead horse and beating it with another sequel stick, they have come up with something original and interesting.
From what I can gather by reading the limited press materials, you play the part of Deimos, a dungeon master that has fallen victim to a nasty plot hatched by your crazy bitch of an ex-girlfriend. This has placed you at the top of the dungeon, which we all know is the “LOL n00b” level. But you know you’re better than that. You just have to prove it. How do you do that, you ask? Well, dear reader, allow me to explain.
As the lord of the dungeon, you get to design the dungeon however you see fit. Use traps, command minions, scatter your gold piles around and maybe put out some fancy loot for them to collect. It is possible to just smite them the moment they walk in the door, but you’re more than a little sadistic and you want to watch them squirm. Don’t worry; I won’t tell. You’re among friends here.
Once the heroes have battled their way through your intricately planned lair to the pretty rewards at the end, the real fun begins. That’s when you extract their soul energy (which I presume is the game’s currency, used to create bigger and badder traps/minions). The soul energy is the reason that you want to balance the difficulty somewhere between soul-crushing and happy jaunt through the park. If they feel that they have accomplished something in conquering your dungeon, their souls will be a much richer source of energy than if it was too easy. Make them work for it, keep them alive and happy… and then destroy them.
I can’t wait to get my hands on this one. It reminds me a lot of the old Deception games where you want to lure in your victims and then melt their faces off in the most brutal way possible. I personally loved the Deception series. The strategy combined with the twist of playing the villain drew me in, and no strategy game since has been able to duplicate the feeling I got from creating big chains of death and destruction.
Dungeons is available now for pre-order on Steam for $39.99, and will be playable on February 10th, 2011.
It's almost as if they're putting you in the Diablo developer's seat.
Yeah, with the added bonus of being able to torture and kill the heroes after they make it through your dungeon.
Nothing says fun like torture!