Name: LGR - Dungeon Keeper - DOS PC Game Review
Uploaded: 2020-03-20T10:51:21.000Z
Duration: 11 min 48 s
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Augh, what a game, just an absolute classic on the PC.

Forget that this abomination exists, THIS is the Dungeon Keeper you want to play.

Or this one but you know, one game at a time.

Today we’re looking at the Bullfrog game released in 1997 for MS-DOS and Windows PCs,

a timeless game from the days when Peter Molyneux stuff was something to be cherished

Yep, this is a game designed by Molyneux at his best, and just going by the box art alone

you get the feeling it isn’t taking itself too seriously.

Aw it’s a NICE toothy demon, the kind of guy that’d go out of his way to make you

On a collector’s note, this is the original European release that I have here.

I actually like this box a little more than the American one, which has different logos

and artwork, and features the tagline “Evil Is Good.”

Unfortunately mine doesn’t have the gatefold cover from that one but hey, you win some,

Inside the box is another story though, with one of those super classy centered cardboard

And the game disc itself is pretty excellent on its own, but then you get to the reference

I don’t know even how they call this a card, it’s 30 pages long!

Then there’s the manual, which is a beefy 78 pages of instructional bliss.

All black and white, but all great information going into more than enough detail about every

detail of the game’s details in great detail.

And don't forget the Deeper Dungeons Mission Disk, an expansion featuring 30 more challenging

levels, graphical and AI adjustments, and was later sold together with the original

Dungeon Keeper begins with an intro video showing the dungeon you’ll be keeping, along

with the kind of folks you’ll be defending against.

You know, classic fantasy archetypes like knights, archers, warriors, and wizards. D&D-kind of stuff all

of which is just cannon fodder for the delectable demon-spawn you have fighting for you.

And yep, we’ll be taking a look at this lower-res MS-DOS version for most of the review,

even though it’s not as graphically intensive as the higher-res mode or Windows 95 Direct3D version.

Anyway, off with his head, and then onto the main menu, where you’re given a choice to

Gameplay in each mode is largely the same, so we’ll be seeing single-player footage

in this video. Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning here you can also play a skirmish mode against

AI opponents in multiplayer using the “/1player” command line option.

It’s an awesome feature that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking, so hey, the

more you know. ♪ding ding ding diiinnng ♫

Starting a single-player game brings you to a bright and colorful map screen, acting as

a visual guide to a set of maps you’ll play through in a linear fashion.

But the best part about this is the delightfully twisted narrator, who just oozes slimy detail in the best possible way...

Narrator: "Set in the realm of joy, the people of Eversmile are plagued only by aching facial muscles, and not anthrax as we had hoped."

"Eversmile is a disgusting land of good humor and polite frivolity."

The Deeper Dungeons pack on the other hand just gives you a list of maps to play in any order you like.

But it’s meant to be played after you’ve mastered the main game so I guess they figure

hey, you know you want it, so why bother with foreplay.

Speaking of the main event of the night, oh man.

Dungeon Keeper is one of those games that grabs you by the nads right from the beginning,

even if you have no idea what’s going on or what you’re really looking at.

With each new map I love taking a moment to sit back and just do nothing for a minute, admiring the

dark pixelated caverns and taking in that tortured ambient soundscape...

Mmm, it’s like Populous knocked up Quake, I love it.

Bullfrog were masters of building a captivating atmosphere and aesthetic, and this was due

in no small part to artist Mark Healey and sound designer Russell Shaw, the former of

which went onto design the Little Big Planet games, and the latter went onto compose music

and sound for the Black & White and Fable games.

This stuff thoroughly augments Molyneux’s '90s game design in Dungeon Keeper, granting an

experience that leaves a lasting impression even two decades later.

And while there are several real-time strategy games from '97 that still hold up, Dungeon

Keeper is one of those that goes a step further in my opinion.

This is a role reversal of your typical dungeon-crawling fantasy game, and instead of playing the hero,

you play the villain. Or rather, the villain controlling the villains.

There’s no crawling through a dungeon as a hero, you’re creating the dungeon for

so-called heroes to crawl through, in an effort to ensure their swift demise.

At the heart of your dungeon is the... heart of the dungeon, and the goal is to keep this

It is a 3D game that can be zoomed, rotated, and navigated pretty much how you’d expect, although

it does feature a set of options to make it play more like an overhead 2D RTS if that’s

Regardless of how it looks, the first order of business is to entice your minions to do

things like burrow into the landscape to expand your dungeon, reinforce the walls and build

Seams of valuable gold, gems, and other materials run through the ground, right alongside vats of

perilous lava, hoards of heroes and even competing dungeons, so it’s your job as dungeon

keeper to make sure your minions don’t delve too greedily and too deep.

And unlike many other RTS games, you do this by marking areas and influencing your minions,

rather than selecting and queueing their actions directly.

Each minion is controlled by its own AI, which can adjusted in the options, but

all that's going on here is they’ll do whatever job makes

the most sense in relation to their mood and surroundings.

You can use your god hand to pick them up and drop them somewhere else, or even slap

them because Molyneux has always been really into that I guess, but whether or not they’ll

do precisely what you hope for depends on a variety of factors.

There’s also a somewhat useless feature that allows you to take possession of creatures

directly, which is cool but there’s only so much you can do this way.

Yeah you can fight in first-person but it sucks, so more often than not it’s just

better to take a hands-off approach and let them do their own thing.

Besides, your main job is not to take direct control, but rather to dole out generalized

plans and provide incentives that help them achieve your goals.

A lot of this comes from setting aside areas in the dungeon to become specific rooms by

For example, creatures need places to rest so you’ll build lairs, they also need food so you build hatcheries,

they can level up so you build training gyms, gold and loot has to be stored in treasure

rooms, if you want to research new tech you build libraries and workshops, and so on.

As you build more rooms and improve dungeon conditions, new monsters and minions will

be attracted to the dungeon and waltz through a nearby portal to do your bidding.

Giant beetles, spiders, warlocks, trolls, dragons, just a wide menagerie of beasties