Genre: Tower Defense
Website: http://www.dungeonkeeper.com/
Shane:
- Platform: Android
- Hours logged: 31.0
- Playthroughs: --
- Rating: 7/10
- Shane (5/1/2014): I tell you that I didn't want to like this game. Lee and I talked about it for a couple of days actually, reading reviews, thinking about previous Dungeon Keeper games, and formulating this very blog. In the end, this ISN'T a Dungeon Keeper game in anything more than sprites. They took the Intellectual Property and did something else with it.
Right when the game hit and the internet gaming community lost their collective minds I was in the middle of my own Rage against micro-transactions ruining games for my generation. Really, I still feel that way, but I have more data-points now. In Marvel Puzzle Quest I lost some of my hard won stuff (game rewards) because I refused to pay for more roster slots. That felt like a ransom. The hour where that happened was the last hour that game remained installed on my mobile device.
This game was less offensive. Yes there is a not-insubstantial "pay-to-win" function where I can buy gems to buy more minions to build my dungeon faster. I find that I am not AS offended by that honestly. Any more I am not picking up a game so that I can 100% my way through it. If it was important to me that I beat everyone else out there doing this thing then an advantage for people with money would rile me more. I will never be the best player of this game. I don't even maximize my dungeon build now, and I could think of 1/2 a dozen ways in which to do that immediately.
I also read an article by one of the LaMartina twins (one of them works for BioWare and the other for Mythic, which is the company that released this new version. I don't remember which one wrote the article... I may have to email them and ask.) where a defense for the game came forth. Many of the points rang true, though I wasn't willing to install right then. When I find the article in question I will drop in an edit, in case anyone wants to read it.
So what about the game itself? It is fine. I gave it a 6 out of 10. Considering that my rating system starts at a 5 and either goes up or down according to how the item tickles me, a 6 is "not bad." I don't really have any efficiencies to report or strategy to impart. After about 20 hours, spaced around over a couple weeks, I don't think this is that kind of game. It is really just a time sink. Play a couple minutes, go do something else, then the game pops up a notification that it is ready for your attention again. Then you go back and do more things. One note in the negative for the game? If you don't play it every couple hours (or less), you will stop accruing resources. This is annoying. There are a couple different resource counters at play. One is the stockpile counter with a hard limit (entertainingly this limit is well planned for making you level up more or less how the developers wanted you to. Making up some numbers here, it is 100K stone to upgrade your dungeon heart. Well, your stone stockpile only goes to 90K. I guess you have to upgrade that first. Clever bastards...) that goes up as you upgrade. The other is a counter on the mining rooms. If you don't log in and collect your resources then you will hit this limit first. This was an extra step that I found to be just a bit too much. Small thing, I know, but it jabbed at me enough to rate it below Dragons of Atlantis, which I played concurrently.
Would I recommend this game? Conditionally yes. If you want to play a traditional game where you sit and immerse yourself in the story and attempt to master certain gameplay aspects then this title will waste your time. If, however, you have a weekend to burn getting started then you want to do occasional tweaks to a sandbox that is almost entirely outside of your control... not unlike a rat in a maze I guess... well, then go for it. The tasks are REALLY not hard, the rewards occur at regular intervals and it gives the illusion of a good time.
Oh, and I love the voice of the big red dude. Smooth as a rock tumbler.
- Lee (5/6/2014): Shane, here is the link to Nate LaMartina's blog post: http://nlamartina.blogspot.ca/2014/02/defending-dungeon-keeper.html
- Shane (6/22/2014): Thanks for the link Lee! I went ahead and removed this game after playing it for SEVERAL more hours. I joined a guild and played with that functionality some. I did some PVP offensively instead of just defensively. I did enjoy what was there but in the end I didn't feel that there was enough ... fun maybe, to justify playing more. Any task that I might want to accomplish within the game, like maxing out any of my rooms or traps, was going to take so FUCKING long that it wasn't worth it to me anymore.
I was disappointed to hear that the company that made this game ended up closing it's doors. Last I talked to Nick LaMartina (who worked there and did sound for this game) though, he was hopeful about job opportunities and, as he put it, is just looking for the right one. If his next opportunity puts him working on another game, I look forward to playing that one too.
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