Dungeon Keeper – Retro Review

Bullfrog Productions’ final game with Peter Molyneux at the helm was a fittingly brilliant title. Dungeon Keeper took the groundwork of classics like Theme Park and Syndicate and crafted a darkly comic take on the type of fantasy world Molyneux would go on to fully realise in the Fable series. Here the player remains underground, plotting the downfall of a beautiful and peaceful kingdom from beneath. Playing out as a combination of god game and real-time-strategy, Dungeon Keeper is similar to other Bullfrog games, and while some point to Populous or Syndicate as their best work, Dungeon Keeper certainly deserves some consideration.

What makes the game special is difficult to pin down. It has an unmistakable charm, solid mechanics and a brilliantly worked tutorial system which helps ensure the player is never overwhelmed. It oozes quality at every turn, yet never takes itself seriously. Molyneux has always allowed plenty of humour into his games, but Dungeon Keeper is relentless about it. The map screen, which begins as a pristine, colourful land and gradually turns black and red as you destroy each area, is where the darkly comic attitude of the game first becomes apparent, as the narrator says “EverSmile. 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 humour and polite frivolity.” After completing a level the narrator then tells of how the opposite is true, with his deadpan ever so slightly cracking with the joy of destruction and mayhem.

This comic style continues into the first level. Summoning an imp, the game’s most common monster – used to dig through walls, mine gold and generally do the dungeon housekeeping, is done by selecting a spell and clicking – leading to the ridiculous of ‘yippee’ as the imp celebrates its creation. It can then be slapped by right clicking, repeatedly, which is awfully sadistic, yet awfully funny at the same time. Once the more impressive monsters start to arrive this continues. A hatchery of tiny chickens is built to feed them and each monster has its own way of feeding. A particular favourite is the warlock, who zaps a chicken with magic, turning it into a roast chicken that looks like it came from an oven. Its attention to detail like this that makes a game rise above its competition, and in Dungeon Keeper these little comic moments are constant. Even the narrator’s lines have an appeal. Hearing his mock-outrage that ‘Your minions are under attack’ or ‘Your creatures are fighting amongst themselves’ remains an enduring memory of the game for many who played it in the late 90’s.

The aforementioned tutorial system is quite excellent. The early levels see a mere three or four room and monster types available, with a new one added each subsequent level. It takes quite a while for everything to become available, but there is a genuine sense of accomplishment in gaining a new room or creature, especially when you manage to start turning enemies into skeletons and vampires, or even getting them to turn to your side by sending them for a torture session with the Mistress, a leather-clad dominatrix who specialises in whipping enemy creatures. With new strategies and abilities unlocked steadily, the game remains manageable and it’s possible to learn exactly what to do in order to succeed without ever feeling bogged down in a tutorial, it feels akin to the progression of a classic FPS, in which new guns are found every few levels to match increasingly tough enemies. The game does seem quite easy until about ten levels in, when suddenly you are absolutely overwhelmed and overpowered by enemies, and new tactics have to be adopted. By then though, the game has given you enough training to do so.

Battles with the enemies come in two formats. The first is against the whiter than white forces of the Lord of the Land, who proclaims his intent to purge evil from the land upon entering your dungeon. He is usually dispatched quickly and easily, though later on can be quite a powerful foe. His dull, charisma-less heroics form the comedic counterpoint to a dungeon full of personalities like the Bile Demon, a red blob with giant horns essentially, who, fittingly, spits bile on his enemies in battle. The biggest challenge comes from the second type of enemy – the rival dungeon keeper. Early on his monsters seem to be capped at a low level (training monsters leads to them levelling up, RPG style) but later in the game they can be as strong as your own monsters, and it takes some cerebral play to outwit and ultimately defeat the AI. Traps, doors, sacrifices and many more tactics need to be used to create as strong a force of evil creatures as possible in order to win the day and ruin another idyllic village.

In the fourteen years since Dungeon Keeper first appeared the god game has almost completely disappeared from mainstream gaming, except in the form of ‘The Sims’. This probably helps a huge amount in making Dungeon Keeper still play extremely well, there is simply very little to compare it to today, no games have really advanced on the formula enough to make it seem dated and its humour is timeless. Evil is still more fun than good, but few games revel in it quite to this extent. The isometric view can be a tad jarring at first, but that really is the only element that seems out of place today, everything else could, with a little graphical upgrade, fit quite nicely into a modern title. The character designs are top notch, the setting and story a lot of fun and the gameplay is absolutely wonderful. A pity then, in many ways, that Molyneux has moved on to Fable and Bullfrog is no more, as more Dungeon Keeper, or even something along its lines would be more than welcome. Not enough games ask us to be just plain evil, and painfully few make it so much fun.

Dungeon Keeper is available from GOG.com, and playable on modern PCs, up to and including Windows 7.