Dungeons Previews

Two more hands-on previews of Realmforge’s Dungeons are ready to bring us into the weekend, and we start things off at PC Gamer where they happily call it a Dungeon Keeper rip-off:

Still, despite all the shameless shameless cloning of theme and basic ideas, Dungeons does feel at least a bit different to Dungeon Keeper. For starters, you directly control the Dungeon Lord instead of just directing minions around from a distance, and can get properly stuck in with an RPGstyle levelling system and direct combat spells. If you die, you simply respawn back at the Dungeon Heart. Your goblin goons rush around carving out more space, but the rest of your monsters are controlled more by initial placements. If those aren’t the right spots, there’s no simply gathering up everyone in your dominion and hurling them en masse at any invading heroes. You need a bit more planning than that.

The most important tweak to the formula is that simply killing heroes does you no good. You’re not trying to repel them; you’re farming them. When a hero first descends to face his or her doom, their naive corpse is worthless to you. You have to build them up before you knock them down, driving them towards piles of gold (your gold!), tomes of arcane lore (evil lore!) and other adventurer-friendly loot. This makes their soul energy bars nice and juicy, ready for you to finally harvest with a cry of, (Surprise! +1 Sword up the arse!)

And then GamesRadar shares their impressions, as well:

Most evil overlords aim to discourage meddlesome heroes from gallivanting around their demonic inner sanctum and laying waste to all their hard work. That’s not how things go in this neck of the woods. Not only do you want to attract heavily armed do-gooders deep into your lair, you’re actually meant to pretty up the place with piles of gold, new equipment and armor, dusty tomes full of arcane secrets, and other shiny goodies for them to swipe and interact with. That’s where the awesomely wicked twist comes in.

Heroes who spend lots of time soaking up the numerous delights strewn about your caverns amass soul points. Different heroes are into different things taking gold, finding new weapons, reading books, healing others, battling monsters, whatever but you can fill those needs by placing the right kind of rooms and letting them romp until they’re satisfied. Then, by waiting to imprison or torture these goody-goodies when they’re plump with mojo, you’ll harvest more valuable resources for your own evil aims. In other words, you want to lure .m in and fatten them up before you slaughter them.