Slap my Imp up: Bullfrog's Dungeon Keeper

This January EA managed to piss just about everyone off with their greedy micro transaction-fuelled Android/iOS reboot of Dungeon Keeper. How dare it sully the joyful memories of this near perfect mix of god game/RTS that kept me busy being an evil overlord back in 1997. Bullfrog Productions: Dungeon Keeper 1997 Fiendishly …

[Slacker@work]

ahhh that takes me back...

..many a happy hour spent slapping the minions to make them work harder, or spanking the mistresses just for the fun of it!

Much like my work life really.

[IT Hack]

2000AD

Nemisis and the ABC Warriors...

*sigh*

[Slacker@work]

Re: 2000AD

I was never that keen on Nemesis, but the ABC Warriors were great (along with Slainthe, Stronty dogs, Dredd...)

[Semtex451]

I might still have the cd, and Mrs Semtex is at work tomorrow.......

[Tom Chiverton 1]

gog.com had it on offer recently. it's not very much money even now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just leave this here...

[Not That Andrew]

Ooh didn't know KeeperFX had updated, thanks

[MrDamage]

Forgive my ignorance

But what is KeeperFX?

Have they reworked DK with graphical updates and such?

I still play it on an old 486 running Win98 I keep handy for my older games collection. I still make it a point of playing the Baldurs Gate series at least once a year.

[Stretch]

I remember buying this on a day out with my family when very young. What an excellent game.

The creators of Dungeon Gouger on mobile should be hung, drawn and quartered obviously.

[Tsung]

If you are after a modern day version.

War for the OverWorld is shaping up rather nicely.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/230190/

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: If you are after a modern day version.

Wow, that really does look like a direct rip-off!

[Not That Andrew]

Re: If you are after a modern day version.

IMO, at present you're better off with KeeperFX

[Lost In Clouds of Data]

Re: If you are after a modern day version.

Not so much a rip off, more a spiritual successor from DKII, made with the blessing of Peter Molyneux and starring Richard Ridings back as old Horny himself.

And without doubt a more valid entry into the franchise than the awful - no, scrub that - shit-fucking goddamn awful, EA Dungeon Keeper iPhone and Android app that managed to take all the enjoyment and fun of the originals and turn it into hatred and loathing (Henceforth known as DuKINO...)

[C Yates]

I'm STILL playing this!!

I've been playing this off and on since I discovered the emulator - it is still such an awesome game, despite the graphics!

I discovered a bit back that all the monster stats and attributes were stored in a plain text file - so I tweaked things so that if I trained an imp upto level 10 he would morph into a level 10 Avatar... Much fun has ensued since :D

It *needs* a decent remake - not the recent piece of money-grabbing crap that EA came out with and should be dragged out into the street and shot for.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

It *needs* a decent remake - not the recent piece of money-grabbing crap that EA came out with and should be dragged out into the street and shot for.

Show me an EA game that this sentiment doesn't apply to...

[C Yates]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

Were I to have the ability to grant 100 upvotes, this comment would benefit from it...

It seems a shame that games seem to be more about screwing people out of extra cash with microtransactions and other sharp practices than actually being fun now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

Show me an EA game that this sentiment doesn't apply to...

SIMS 2 - SIMS is basically Dungeon Keeper for Girls, the game is pretty open on what one can do ;-)

It did not take long for my 12 year old daughter and friend to figure out ON THEIR OWN how to make sims naked, how to make sims gay, run a sub game on how many "french cleaners" the head of the family can knock up before the wife finds out (12 is the record).

Then they went to things like building sims who love food and are afraid of water - and placing the fridge on an island in the swimming pool.

Of course, this being a long time ago, maybe EA nerf'ed it?

[Elmer Phud]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

"Then they went to things like building sims who love food and are afraid of water - and placing the fridge on an island in the swimming pool."

My own delicate girls made lots of young Sims, got them in a swimming pool and removed the ladder.

(The 'watch a Sim really, really busting for a pee' was the training level.)

They went on to things like a room full of stuffed furniture, several open fireplaces and some Sims - then remove the door.

Oh, such squeals of merriment from the kids, such innocent days .

[Not That Andrew]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

Actually they DID remove the pools from the latrest version of The Sims, but that's just so they can charge for them in an Expansion Pack.

[goldcd]

I would have said Plants vs Zombies 2

I very much enjoyed it initially. I even bought some in-game stuff to thank them - stuff that would improve the game, not magic beans you buy as they've crippled the game otherwise and will be buying eternally.

I thought it was a very pleasant and pragmatic of the 'free to play' model.

Then one day I got a massive game update, whole game changed and I'd been nuked back to the beginning and chucked some magic beans.

I can only assume EA had noticed PopCap had snuck out a decent game and were mortified.

[fanboi #451]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

Me too! Still playing DK2 though which I preferred, especially the cutscenes (mistress torturing a skeleton and the giant playing tennis with a chicken) and the skeleton's laugh when 'enemy in sight'.

[Dapprman]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

I'm another still playing it, though also preferring DK2. Only problem is I find it very hard to make much out on a modern hi resolution monitor, and yes that's when windowed, not full screen.

[billat29]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

DK2? DK2!!! The game my son bought for himself and spent most of its time exiting to the desktop thus forcing hardware money to be spent by his Dad to get the bloody thing to run.

And it still kept crashing....

[cdilla]

Re: I'm STILL playing this!!

Likewise. As are all my, now adult, kids.

It was a ritual. Every time a new PC was built the first thing that had to be got working was Dungeon Keeper. I have multiple backup copies of the CD. There are few games with such longevity, though I still do fire up emulations of JSW II and AMC from time to time.

[Jagged]

My favourite of the "spiritual" successors was Overlord. You could see the obvious influences but was a great game in its own right.

[MrDamage]

Overlord

Another fun game to be evil in.

I've also got Dungeons, but I don't seem to enjoy it as much as DK or Overlord.

[jason 7]

No love for a Master of Orion 2 special?

Please?

[Shrimpling]

Re: No love for a Master of Orion 2 special?

Coincidentally I found my MOO2 CD Rom the other day and have been playing it via Dosbox all week!

Awesome game.

[Spotfist]

Re: No love for a Master of Orion 2 special?

It has to be Master of Orion the original, the sequel was good yes but the original was a much better game. Started playing this on Dosbox the other day too! I find it hard to believe that there is no game like this on the play store :(

[breakfast]

Lunacy

I was thinking about this just the other day, specifically the excellent bonus level that only appeared on a full moon. That was pretty neat - it didn't occur to me to change my computer's date ( I was young and kind of a chump ) so I remember being pleased to realise it was a full moon and I could explore that level.

[ForthIsNotDead]

Must be a bit too old...

Never 'eard of it. The 80's 8-bitters were my thing. Playing games on a PC just didn't feel the same to me! Give me a Speccy, or a BBC B, or a C64 or a... well, just about anything except a PC. That said, there have been some awesome PC games. I'm particularly into anything driving related. F1, NFS etc.

Game on :-)

[stucs201]

Re: Must be a bit too old...

I'd agree that to be properly old school a game needs to be 8-bit.

Even including PC game though this is pushing what I'd consider a boundary - the move from DOS to Windows. I seem to recall this came with versions for both (so I'll have installed the DOS version, DirectX was still very troublesome at the time).

[phuzz]

Re: Must be a bit too old...

You could play it on an Amiga, and Amigas are most emphatically not the same as IBM PCs.

[BoldMan]

Antique? Antique??

1997 Antique? Damn I must be getting old!

[Marki Mark]

Begone Foul Demon!

Many, many hours spent playing DK...

Was really looking forward to playing it on the phone / tablet. EA really manged to screw the pooch on that one!

[Haku]

Re: Begone Foul Demon!

phone / tablet. EA really manged to screw the pooch on that one!

You chose some very kind words to describe how badly EA 'screwed the pooch', look at NerdCubed's* summary of the mobile version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdoBwezFVA

*a gem amongst YouTube gamers, he has 1.8 million subscribers, please take a look at his other videos, the DK one was just an exception

[Fresh Mint]

It's on Origin!!

https://www.origin.com/en-gb/store/browse?q=dungeon

Yup! and I play it on windows 7 ok. Not sure about windows 8/8.1

War for the OverWorld is ok but I think they are trying to be a bit too cleaver with some of their thinking in the game, but then it's still in development and I just love DK and DK2. Change is good?

[MikeyD85]

Here's something for you

keeper.exe -1player

Enables all the multiplayer maps as single player skirmishes. Well worth adding to your shortcut. :)

"A mistress is unhappy because she hasn't been paid"

*slap*

[0laf]

Loved it.

Never completed the single player game. Got to the last level but never made it. Then Uni got important. I'll still have the disks for this in a box somewhere.

[Aaiieeee]

Ive still got the disc somewhere

One of the best games I ever played; I used to rush home from school so I could play more of it.

The 'possess' feature was absolutely amazing! You could play the whole game and never use it, but it made the experiance so much more real.

[sisk]

Dungeon Keeper FTW!

I came across my DK CD while cleaning out the storage unit just last week and popped it in to find out if it'd run under Wine for nostalgia's sake. Unfortunately it seems that my optical drive has died at some point in the 6 months since the last time I used it, so no antique code fun for me.

Still this was one of my favorite games back in the day, right up there with Rock 'n Roll Racing and StarCraft.

[Jagged]

There were so many good things in Dungeon Keeper that it was hard to pick a favourite feature, the voice over work of Richard Ridings and his script must come pretty near the top though :)

[Greg J Preece]

My main slave the Imp is brought to life with a click of the mouse and a cheeky “Yipee!”

OK, I have played this game far too much to not go all pedantic on your ass. That's what they say when you drop them. When they're born they do this odd half-laugh thing - "Nyh-ha-ha".

DK is one of my all-time favourite games. I still have the DK Gold big box, the sequel, and I have the GoG version permanently installed on my Windows partition just in case I want to make someone miserable.

The Deeper Dungeons though....now there's an expansion pack that will eat your face for breakfast.

[Boothy]

DK3 and/or EG 2 please :-)

Dungeon Keeper 2 and Evil Genius - Two of my all time favourite games, had both from new.

Still play both occasionally, completed DK2 (again!) only about 2 weeks ago.

I want DK3 (or a suitable DK reboot), and EG2. (and not some crappy facebook micro transaction POS!).

I'd pay money for them, really I would, I'd even pay EA (shudder), as long as they do it properly.

[John Sanders]

Bullfrog

What amazing games they made at the time.

[Scott 62]

Your creatures need a bigger lair!

<3 Dungeon Keeper

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved this game, this and Carmageddon

[MaXimaN]

I bought DK2 from GOG a couple of months back. Apparently they fixed a few bugs beyond the last official update, and it's been (mostly) rock solid (no pun intended) for me. Fantastic game, although once you work out the limitations of the AI it's not that hard to beat in single-player mode. Skirmish and Multiplayer are huge amounts of fun, though.

[Promotor Fidei]

DK2, too.

It's so good to be evil :)

I didn't even look at the mobile version, though. EA buying a famous game and bringing it to mobile without pumping me for cash at literally every turn? Yeah right.

I did however just pay almost 8€ for DK and DK2 from Gog (package deal). Which is more of my money than any freemium game will ever see.

Installing now - so see you later.. much later.

[Adam Inistrator]

"It's GOOD to be BAD!"

heheh