Kalypso Media, fresh from their recent strategy management title, Patrician IV, have teamed up with developer Realmforge Studios to spice up the early 2011 line-up with a very familiar sounding game.  Dungeons is a strategy management title with a twist.  Before you get your hopes up, no, you aren’t playing as a whip-wielding dominatrix with a penchant for ribbon tailed floggers but, rather, as a despicable Dungeon Lord who presides over and manages an underground dominion.

Stop me if any of this sounds remotely familiar.  No, despite my near obsession with Bullfrog’s original 1997 title, Dungeon Keeper, this game is not a product  of my fevered fantasies, but is very much a reality and due to hit sometime in February.  In development by Realmforge, who produced the well received adventure game, Ceville, the game has strong echoes of Peter Molyneux’s seminal dungeon management game, which is no bad thing, however, the game has been given more of a story to lend some motivation for your evil machinations.

After being on top (or, rather, the bottom) of the dungeon hierarchy, idly luring heroes into your dark labyrinth to trap, torture, and drain their soul energies (presumably for some kind of Blumenthal-esque cocktail), things go a tad pear shaped.  Your ex-girlfriend, not content with (presumably)  leaving bitchspaz messages on DungeonBook, has concocted a foul plot, the result of which is your downfall, landing you back at square one.  If you want your choking grip back on the forces of light, then you’re faced with taking down three other Dungeon Lords (to whom you are now beholden) and work your way back up to extract your revenge.

Dungeons sees you using your flaccid horde of goblins to hack out a dungeon and create rooms, with the goal of luring, trapping, and then…managing heroes.  The game, initially, may sound nearly identical to Dungeon Keeper, however underneath the setting, format, and spin on the traditional good vs. evil play, the differences begin to emerge.  While Dungeon Keeper was primarily focussed on managing minions, Dungeons takes the opposite tack.  This is all about the heroes.

Once you have trapped them, you have to nurture your newly acquired inmates and provide for their needs, rather than pandering to the whims and egos of cantankerous minions.  Why aren’t you crushing their bits in a mangle and slapping a hellish horde into doing your bidding?  Simply because happy heroes generate more Soul Energy, which is your primary goal.  The happier they are, they more they produce…which is then extracted by you in a ‘harvest’ through means of torture.  It sounds sinister, with undertones reminiscent of some of mankind’s darkest hours, however, in the happy game world, laced with dark humour, this hero/hell factory is oddly intriguing.

Each hero type (of which there are many) has different needs which require pandering to if you are to ‘fatten up’ their happiness.  Some seek treasure, others, arcane knowledge from your libraries, or kick arse weaponry.  Lots of weaponry.  Others have more interesting fetishes: pain (inflicting and receiving – these heroes sound like our kind of scum), triggering traps, or healing others.

With heroes taking centre stage in your management affections, minions are very much consigned to the background.  They don’t need fed, trained or faffed with and, while they are used to fight, Realmforge have made it clear that they aren’t the stars of the show and, instead, are more cannon fodder for the heroes than anything.  Indeed, rather than a disembodied presence, the player can actually control their Dungeon Lord who has been described by Realmforge as ‘the most effective combat unit the player has’, so expect to get your own hands dirty when it comes time for a scrap.

All this harvested Soul Energy is used to create workers and build various important things in your dungeon, though you’ll need to complete quests in order to earn skill points to unlock new spells and skills.  From what we can tell, gaining strength relies on securing ‘prestige’ which you get from pimping up your dungeon with the wealth of items on offer -  customisation which can give your rooms a unique look.  The rich, alluring graphics speak of a good level of detail, and careful examination of screenshots reveal more than the obvious Dungeon Keeper style would suggest at a glance: tools are laid out on workbenches, skeletons hang on walls, and gaudy carpets decorate libraries (it’ll take more than a can of Shake & Vac to get the Minotaur smell out, so shop wisely).

As far as game modes go, multiplayer won’t make it into the initial release, however, we can probably expect to see it at some later date, along with a mod toolset for the more adventurous. Also,  for those who are hoping for a sexy collector’s edition of this beast, you’d better get importing because it is limited to a handful of European countries only, in a similar way to the decent Patrician IV set.

For all the smart graphics, pretty lighting, and new gameplay twists though, there are some concerns.  There only seem to be a few room types available for your heroes (at least as far as has been revealed), and though these can be upgraded, will they be enough to sustain an immersive level of gameplay?  Playing house with a host of Dungeon objects may be fun, but if all they provide is pretty aesthetics and prestige points (Realmforge are understandably playing their cards close to their chests in this respect), then players may well end up simply spamming their dungeon with unwanted objects, just to rack up these points.

Ultimately, I worry that for all the detail and potential for delicious humour, it risks being a touch shallow, which is scary when you consider that Dungeons is likely to be the closest we will likely ever come to another Dungeon Keeper sequel.  Still, I keep the faith and I’m going into it with an open mind.  Yes, the hyperactive part of me that fell in love with Dungeon Keeper all those years ago is practically bouncing up and down with anticipation, but the cynical part is a little more reserved at the potential for disappointment.  The depraved third of me, however, is already paging  through ‘What Torture’ in anticipation of, once again, ruling the underworld.

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