Dungeon Keeper World: Hmm

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.

One Tristran Taylor kindly alerted me to MMO Culture's fact-barrage about the game, having thought "Can I use this to horrify/inform a writer I like?" Yes, yes you can.

If the site's info is correct, 'Dungeon Keeper World' will be half traditional beast-bashing, dungeon-crawling MMO and half some form of base-building management game.

The character designs in the apparent concept art do little to reassure fans of the grimy trad. monsterism of the original Dungeon Keeper, but the base-building element sounds appealing. Most especially because the creatures you house and train in your base can be summoned to your side in the overworld adventuring.

Now that is a lovely idea. You raise an army in your downtime, and that army is at your beck and call when you're out monster-bashing and player-harrassing. The leaked info also claims you'll be able to invade other player's bases.

Now, I'm not going to pretend this is the Dungeon Keeper sequel remake we want, or that it deserves the Dungeon Keeper name. I'm also not going to pretend I honestly have a good feeling about this game: as we've seen with Lords of Ultima, there's definitely a lack of reverence for EA's PC classics somewhere high-up in the publisher's ranks.

But I do like that army concept.