When you first look at Dungeons, you can’t help but think Dungeon Keeper and imagine a remake of it. But once you actually get yours hands on it, what you find is something very different.
I suppose I can compare Dungeons with Evil Genius, but only very slightly. While you still manage your base (a dungeon) and try to keep the good guys (heroes) at bay, you don’t have a blank slate to begin building. Instead, you are given a dungeon which you can somewhat alter by tunnelling, building more rooms and placing furnishings.
Personally, I expected this game to go along the lines of Trapt, where you place your traps and activate them as the unsuspecting adventurers come near them, watching them die horrible deaths. Even in Evil Genius it was hilarious to see spies fall into certain traps. Here, the point is not so much to defend, but to place objects in your dungeon in order to attract heroes into exploring it. Some look for gold, some look for armor, and some others are looking only for knowledge, so you must place piles of treasure, bookshelves or weapons caches to attract them.
Heroes have sets of desires (like The Sims) which you must fulfil to make them happy. The happier they are, the higher is their Soul Energy, which is your primary resource. So, first you attract them and let them run around looting to make them happy. Then, you chase them down, fight them and throw them into a prison cell so you can slowly drain their Soul Energy. You can use your Soul Energy to build gimmicks (decorative items that earn you prestige) or monster generators.
While there is a bit of strategy involved into not letting the adventures destroy your dungeon heart and trying to stop them yourself (before your minions do and in that case you get penalized), there is no strategy involved into the building portion. You can’t really control where your heroes go, since they will go always straight to whatever is in their needs list, so having a maze or a big open space, it doesn’t really make a difference. Also, there are no doors, so once you have tunneled somewhere, you can’t close that area back up in any way or “undo” something you just did (along the lines of “oops, I really didn’t want to mine that wall…”).
I found that this dungeon building and customizing was fairly limited, but I was pleased with being able to control my dungeon overlord directly. I can move around to track down adventurers, press hotkeys to use skills and spells while in a hack-and-slash type of combat. But eventually, it all comes down to monitoring and managing resources, like in any strategy game.
Dungeons seriously lacks a tutorial though. I had no idea what I was doing in the first level and kept wandering around with my overlord just killing heroes. All I was told was find the exit, and while I did see the exit, I couldn’t figure out how to get to it because I couldn’t tunnel to it. Anyway, some extra help would have been great to have when I was just starting.
The stronger points in Dungeons are definitely the look of the dungeons, objects, creatures lighting and spell effects. The music is pleasant and always adjusting to different situations. Also worth noting is the humor present throughout the campaign in the form of funny dialogs and plenty of witty references. Aside from the campaign mode, you can also create the dungeon of your dreams by starting a custom game.
Its faults rely on not being able to control your monsters directly, even if only with simple commands, repetitive missions and not being able to earn experience for Deimos (the overlord) by fighting or building. You may also find the 20 hours of campaign gameplay not worth the retail price.
Although Dungeons may look a lot like Dungeon Keeper, it really is not. If you’re looking for the same kind of experience, you will be disappointed; however, if you embrace it for what it is without comparisons to other titles, you might find yourself surprisingly and pleasantly entertained.