http://n4g.com/news/582437/dungeon-keeper-3-no-its-dungeons
It looks like Dungeon Keeper, but it's called Dungeons. Realmforge and Kalypso are developing a real Dungeon Keeper clone exclusively for PC.
First screenshots!
Bah... Those screens look terrible to me. [/quote]
I'll help clarify...it looks very flat. Dungeons & Dragons Online has traps too. Only, they couldn't ever figure the AI out to get your henchment to even jump over 1 tiny puddle of lava, or how to even walk around it. I think that it's nice they have a working model. Now, they need to beef up the game BEFORE they release it. Just having a creature, in a dungeon, with a mouse pointer doesn't make a game. But, it's a great start.
Awesome! I love dungeon keeper! Fie on EA for raping and murdering bullfrog like they did so many other creative studies.
The op's link is to a site that is just a one sentence report with a link the real article... but the link is convoluted (goes via the german google translate site)
so here is a sanitized link: http://www.pcgames.de/Dungeons-PC-235572/News/Dungeons-Dungeon-Keeper-Klon-erscheint-2011-Ersatz-fuer-darbende-Fans-767221/
Worthplaying has a preview and some screenies for those who are interested.
thanks for the info Osiris. here is a link: http://worthplaying.com/article/2010/11/18/previews/78319/
I can't wait for it to come out
http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread.php?tid=5836
Shameless bump for my own Q&A thread on their forums. I asked a lot of questions and got a lot of answers, so if you want to know more about the game (and find links to other reviews) read through there.
I have pretty high hopes for this game as being original and fun. But I've also quit thinking of it as a DKII successor.
Bummer on multiplayer. Trine did something similar though so not entirely unexpected.
Has anyone played the full game yet? I tried the first level of the demo last night. I don't know if it is just because it is the first level, but I didn't get it. The goal is to attract heroes, make them happy, and then kill them to harvest their soul energy. You can make heroes happy by giving them what they want, for the heroes in the first level this means gold. So you place a big pile of gold for them to find. Ok, so far so good. But in the first level, these piles of gold are placed for you, right in front of the gate where heroes enter and leave your dungeon. And after taking gold from this pile a hero is satisfied and leaves. So you have to kill him before he gets to the gate. This means that you have to keep your dungeon lord nearby. So the game comes down to moving your lord out of the way when the hero enters, wait for him to take the gold, and then kill him before he leaves. Rinse and repeat. You can place monsters on the map, but they are not strong enough to kill heroes. After combat heroes are healed in a few seconds, so monsters are not useful for 'softening' heroes up for your dungeon lord. And you dont want them to kill heroes before they are satisfied, so you shouldn't place them I guess.
Now, it could be that it is just the first level which is just poorly designed, and that the game gets better after that, but right now I'm not motivated to try. It's got a few mixed reviews when looking at metacritic (gamespot gave it a 5.0, but maybe they weren't payed enough ). So what are your experiences?
tip for free ignore the game
to be honest it actualy disapointet me more then elemental
Yeah, stay away. There is nearly no depth to the game, there is a very limited set of buildings. The only thing that is half-decent is actually the campaign, which throws a few unique challenges at you from outside the box.
I'm enjoying the game actually, but I went in with eyes wide open. At the current price, people can and probably will get disappointed. However, I'm enjoying some of the humor, and I like Tycoon games. So it's alright by me. But do not rush out and buy this thinking you're going to get the DKII experience. Because you'll just be setting yourself up for rage.
Bummer - glad to at least hear something positive from nenjin. Guess I'll stay away from this until it goes on sale and hopefully some slightly more positive reviews.
It's getting some positive reviews, strategyinformer gave it an 8.5, gamingXP an 8.1. I get that it isn't a straight dungeon keeper clone but more of a tower defense type of game. I don't mind that. But like I said before, maybe it's just poor level design, but I just don't get it...
the problem with the game is it has 1000 diferent resources its just boring
It's like this.
Heroes stream into your dungeon. They want stuff, like gold or to fight. They'll wander on their own, but you can guide them with building visual improvements that catch their attention. Then you create pentagrams which spawn monsters for them to fight, treasure chests for them to loot, and a few other buildings.
Once they're satisfied, they try to leave, and you chase them down with your Dungeon Lord character. Beating them and imprisoning them gets you soul energy, which you use to buy more prestige objects. You take the captured gold from heroes and use it refill your chests.
If heroes aren't finding what they're looking for, they get annoyed and start heading for your dungeon heart to destroy it and you. I guess only when they're not getting filthy rich do they decide to save the world.
Your dungeon prestige (which is the value of all the prestige objects you built) gives your dungeon lord stat bonuses, which he needs to stay competitive with the heroes, who get stronger and stronger. As you imprison more heroes, you eventually get a champion, which is a boss-hero that can kill your DL.
On top of that you have stat points to spend, a skill tree to work your way through, and several gradients of prestige objects, treasure chests, ect... that hold more entertainment for heroes, give it out faster, replenish faster...
---
The big thing about the game vs. DKII is this. DKII was a sim. This is not so much a sim, even though it looks and acts like it a lot of time. Where monsters had feelings and motivations, heroes just have motivations. There's not a lot of fun in simply kicking back and watching things work.
In the campaign, you're challenged by different scenarios like escorts, non-hero baddies that march into your dungeon, and needing to explore different corners of the map. You get scrolls or bonus points to spend for beating the side missions, even the time limits are kind of abusive.
In the sand box, it's just about different map designs, which vary how many hero gates there are, and stuff like that.
I'm pretty vocal on their forums about where Dungeons falls short. There's NOT enough sim goodness going on, and there are too many restrictions placed on the player intended to balance out their design system. (This whole tangled web of soul energy, prestige and hero difficulty.) A couple other areas like the skill trees really, really need some post-release attention.
In general, Dungeons is about throwing a lot of activity the player's way, and the challenge of building your dungeon while you're constantly under threat from something. Not ALL levels are like that, but when Dungeons wants to challenge you, that's what it does.
I'm enjoying the visuals, some parts of the design and some of the humor. I appreciated the whole ethos behind the game, sort of like being an evil DM from a D&D game. I'm hoping the game does well enough that Realmforge gets the opportunity to make some changes, and inject some more sim fun and life into the game.
Sounds like their biggest mistake was hyping it to be DK3, when in fact the core gameplay is quite different. Apparently for the worse for what I'm hearing from the community. They might get more initial sales this way, but there's going to be a lot more backlash as customers realize they bought what seems to be more a puzzle game than a sim.
So the basic concept sounds interesting, where your trying to create satisfying adventures for heroes who come into your lair. The part where your doing this to kill them later sounds a bit odd though. Might have been more interesting if they dumped that part and just made it more of a kind of wierd dungeon theme park. But still it's an intriguing concept, but it sounds like maybe I'd be better of waiting if I planned to get it?
They never did that. In fact they specifically said that the game would be its own game, not a copy. People just saw the name and the graphics and thought DK, that was not something reinforced by the devs (outside name/graphics).
Not THAT I'd buy.
But yeah the general consensus from other forums seems to be wait for a price drop on this one.
tried the demo. It was a little interesting, but I don't think its going to be my cup of tea. Going to force myself to play a little bit more of the demo and see if my impression changes.
The demo, IMO, does not present Dungeons very well.
The reason is you barely get to use any of the objects/rooms, and really, those are what makes Dungeons as a game. Add in the different hero types, and there's a lot of challenge getting a working dungeon in the full game. The demo doesn't leave you with that impression, because they strung out too many features.
Also the last level of the demo emphasizes what I think is the least fun part of the game, the tower defense. It's basically a slightly modified version of a sandbox Dungeons game they made to give the demo some replayability. I didn't really like it.
I can say the full version of the game is much meatier than the demo implies, though.
I've just finished the third or fourth campaign mission, and I'm not enjoying it. I'm just finding it too tedious; there's a definite feel that they threw in a lot of make-work, forcing you, especially early on, to spam the heck out of prestige items.
It is, I've found, a fairly shallow game, built around three mechanics: resource conversion, matching appropriate monster spawns to appropriate hero spawns, and designing a path for the heroes to take. The wow-style talent tree didn't really excite me, nor did being able to put a few points into strength or other stats.
Likening it to a tower-defense game isn't inapt, but there are enough... rough edges... on this front that I'm left wondering if the similarities were unplanned. You can't, for instance, do any sort of intricate mazing because the heroes detect your monsters through walls, causing them to drop everything and run off for a few minutes through your winding halls to attack some monsters that, while physically close, were in reality quite a distance away. And hell, without xray eyes, those heroes shouldn't have seen them anyways. This sort of behavior can quickly start looping, causing the heroes to get fed up and simply leave the dungeon. (I've yet to have an unscripted attack on my dungeon heart!) So, long, linear, boring halls, spaced widely apart, seem to be the most optimal plan. It's less than exciting, and puts a real damper on the sandbox and design aspects of the game.
I have to say I'm already bored and regret my purchase.
I found a strategy that practically made it so I didn't have to use my lord except against champions.
Locations on a 2d scale
Dungeon Heart1 Gold Chest (only one in dungeon)20 monster spawning thingsarmory/librarySurface
and that's it. All the heroes have either a desire for gold or combat. Everything gets sucked into the grinder like this. The rooms in between the kill zone and the entrances will give them plenty of life energy, and so will the combat. Since they have no chance of taking gold with them, you can never lose gold, only gain it.
So yeah, that's why I think there's a definite lack of depth. I didn't even use prestige items for this.
ok then... that's enough for me on this one. Thanks for all the feedback guys.... maybe if it drops to $5 sometime, but not paying the full price of admission.
Lol, thanks for the info, Heavenfall. I tended to go the opposite and make elaborate mazes a la evil genius or dungeon keeper, which backfired every time
Early on in game you don't need prestige. But later on, you're dead without it. Hero levels go up to 50, and eventually if you don't build prestige, you'll fall way behind in raw physical stats, and get your ass handed to you. You can easily kill stuff early in the level with your DL...but if heroes gain 5 levels and you haven't built any prestige, one hero can seriously hurt you. 4 heroes will mob you ass and kill you.
Still, I don't fault anyone for having problems with the game, it does have issues. I think Heavenfall's way only works for so long though. Yeah, early on, you can get the heroes to do everything in one area....but once there are 20 to 30 heroes on the map, champions, and your dungeon boss throwing stuff at you, the game isn't quite so cut and dry.
You have to play at least 5 levels to get to that point though, which is a problem considering you can easily spend 1 hour on each level if you choose.
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