By Alec Meer on January 7th, 2013.
The trouble with games with long names is that it can become impossible to write non-prosaic headlines. For this reason, I demand that War For The Overworld be removed from the internet this instant, and its creators thrown into a fire.
…Which would be be a very silly thing for me to want, given it’s a remake/sequel of one of the games I most love, Dungeon Keeper. And now it’ll star the sinister tones of Richard Ridings, DK’s cheerfully malevolent narrator.
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By Alec Meer on May 1st, 2012.
There’s one surefire way of getting around my wariness about when and if to cover Kickstarter projects here, and that’s when Kickstarter projects have already reached their funding goals. As well as being glad tidings in and of themselves, it means I don’t risk inadvertently wielding RPS as a flaming sword of financial justice in the event I post about them. Instead I can just say ‘oh hey cool, here’s a neato-sounding videogame that’ll be coming out at some point soon-ish.’
Oh hey cool, here’s a neato-sounding videogame that’ll be coming out at some point soon-ish. It’s called Nekro, it’s from devs who have formerly worked at the likes of Blizzard, Sony and Microsoft, and it claims to be a more free-form take on Dungeon Keeper with meaty chunks of Myth: The Fallen Lords and Giants: Citizen Kabuto thrown in.
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By Alec Meer on February 6th, 2012.
Edit: cos there are various theories flying around below about my perceived intent in posting this, I shall clarify my own feelings. I would really like to see contracts between publishers and developers more commonly include an arrangement whereby key (and ideally, but rather less plausibly, all) creatives on game projects continue to see some post-release royalties, as is the case in some other entertainment and publishing industries. That so many old games are being (apparently profitably) rereleased lately highlights this disparity. That is all.
There’s obviously a very good chance you already know this, but just in case: when a developer is bought out by a publisher, it’s usually the case that they then don’t see any ongoing royalties from the games they make for them, or indeed for any existing intellectual property that was swallowed up as part of the studio acquisition. It’s standard practice, knowingly agreed by both parties during the dark deal some studios made to ensure immediate financial viability and larger project budgets. But what it does mean is that a great many of the PC games we regularly celebrate around these parts are no longer bringing in any money for their creators, despite still being on sale. Whenever we excitedly see an old classic appear on Steam or GoG (such as Thief last week), chances are very high that whatever we pay for it goes purely to the publisher and the download service. And while it may well be right that these bodies profit from projects they funded and distribute, it’s sad that the men and women who toiled over that game’s creation won’t see another penny from it.
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By John Walker on June 3rd, 2011.
Good Old Games are once again scooping up the games of the past, dusting off the cobwebs, teaching them about the future ways, and then setting them free into the internets, unfettered by leashes or DRM. And if you’ve been concerned that their definition of “Good” has been somewhat loose of late, this time they have some true classics. How classic? Pretty much as classic as classic gaming gets. They’ve finally got EA on board with some of the most famous names in PC gaming history. One of them is going to make Alec squeal like five girls. I’m teasing you. I’m making you want to click to carry on reading, and thus increasing our ad loads. No! Don’t look at the tags!
By Alec Meer on February 2nd, 2011.
So I guess I’ve written that this is a Dungeon Keeper clone in a whole bunch of places over the last few months.
Whoops.
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By Alec Meer on December 9th, 2010.
Blizzard (them again) have high hopes for Starcraft II’s editor. Increasingly, so do I. For instance, it’s enabled one enterprising chap sidestepping EA’s failure to make Dungeon Keeper 3 and instead creating his own functional DK prototype in SC2′s engine and universe…
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By Alec Meer on September 28th, 2010.
This I want to try. I want it try it bad. Oh, so bad, baby. Unfortunately I’m currently making zombies wear hats made of spinning drills in Dead Rising 2, but this fan-made fountain of youth for my beloved Dungeon Keeper is very much next on the agenda.
As its creator observes, a lot of game remakes never get off the ground – so instead Polish engineer Tomasz Lis has elected to update what already exists.
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By Alec Meer on August 12th, 2010.
So you know how you wanted Dungeon Keeper 3?
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By Alec Meer on May 31st, 2010.
It is a rare month that I don’t fondly wish for a resurrection of Dungeon Keeper. It is a rarer month still that I hear of a resurrection of Dungeon Keeper and then kinda wish I hadn’t. Details are squeaking out about EA’s mysterious (and possibly China-only) Dungeon Keeper MMO and, well, you’re not going to like them. That said, there are a few glimmers of promise, and enough that I’m fighting the fanboy urge to scream, hiss and make tastelessly overblown statements about what EA have done to my childhood.
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By Alec Meer on August 19th, 2009.
So Dungeon Keeper may be returning, as evidenced by not one but two trademark applications on EA’s part. My feelings on the matter are the very definition of ‘mixed’.
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By Alec Meer on December 9th, 2008.
Whenever I mourn the passing of the Dungeon Keeper games and their much-neglected sub-genre – which I seem to do far too often, like some sort of blogging Miss Havisham – someone always chastises me for overlooking Evil Genius. I’m not overlooking it, I’m just not mentioning it.
It’s certainly the closest to a true follow-up DK’s ever had, coming from Bullfrog splinter cell Elixir and employing exactly the same Bad Guy Base-Building concept. Trouble is, in its clear desperation to not simply be Dungeon Keeper with Austin Powers artwork, it piled on layer after layer of complexity intended to mask its stolen heart. When I originally played it back in 2004, I couldn’t stand it. Genuinely loathed the thing, which very much put me at odds with most other reviewers.
Time, they say, heals all wounds. Which is a patently ridiculous thing to say, otherwise my granddad wouldn’t have been so annoyed about the toe he lost in the war. But it does at least mean I can now approach Evil Genius with a clear head, no longer clouded by sad dreams of DK3.
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