Dungeon Keeper

Dungeon Keeper is a video game that consists of 0 releases

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Dungeon Keeper is a God simulator / Management game where you try to drive the forces of good from the land with a horde of demons using a dungeon as a base of operations.

Welcome to your dungeon

Dungeon Keeper is one of the first projects of legendary game designer Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog Productions released in 1997. Just as with Peters previous works it was a kind of "God simulator" where the player could control demons in his enviroment with a hand, picking them up and dropping them where he wanted. But Dungeon Keeper is still to this date a one of a kind god simulator. It mixes elements from management games and RTS games and most obviously, you play evil. "Evil is Good" accoring to the boxart and the goal in the game is to drive the forces of good from the land. You start the game off in a Dungeon where the only room you have is the "Dungeon Heart".

The Reaper, as seen in the DK cinematic introduction movie.

It is then up to the player to dig out rooms by dragging the mouse over solid rock in the cave. The workers of the game, called imps, will then dig out the highlighted area and allow for you to build a room there. Different rooms have different uses but what they have in common is that they summon different demons from a portal. Different demons have different needs that has to be fulfilled for them to join your ranks (if you are lucky and skilled enough you might end up summoning the Horned Reaper). After that they need somewhere to sleep and a "Hatchery" where they can go to eat chickens. The training room allows them to gain levels so that they can take on the lord of the land when he decides to try and drive you back to the shadows. Money to build and train are gained by finding rocks in the huge cavesystems that has gold veins in them. After marking the gold veins the imps will run over there to bring the gold back to the "Treasury" after mining it with their picks.

The game also inludes a full fledged magic system. To research spells you drop demons (preferrably Warlocks) into the "Library" room wich you have built to attract warlocks in the first place, where they can study and slowly research new spells for you to use. The spells range from standard damaging spells to a "Possess" spell wich can be used to enter a first person mode and manually control a demon instead of seeing the game from the standard isometric view.

Dungeon Keeper has a large dose of humor mixed into the tone of the game. It dosent take itself seriously and the "evil" and "voilence" in the game is portrayed in a very funny way. It is also a very atmospheric game with very dark ambient music composed by Russel Shaw, a very dark and moody narrator and unique soundeffects that reinforce the "dungeon" feeling of the game.
Many games have been greatly influenced by Dungeon Keeper but most notably is Viva Piñata that recently took the Dungeon Keeper concept and applied it to a

A prison can be used to imprison enemy soldiers and eventually turn them to skeleton warriors.

garden instead.

Fun facts

Dungeon Keeper is still (in most cases, as usual with PC specs you can never say "always") fully playable even on a modern machine with Windows Vista. No patching required.
Mark Healey was responsible for almost everything when it came to graphical design in Dungeon Keeper. Something people might want to keep in mind when comparing it to his new project Little Big Planet wich is the straight opposite of dark and demonic.

The incredible rescue

The game was about to be cancelled by Bullfrog as production of it was dragged on to long. They didnt think it would be a success and had lost faith over the course of the long production of it. Peter Molyneux then decided to take a few trusty co-workers and complete the game in his own time for his own money. These valiant saviours spent nights after nights in Peters house where they had set up a temporary office to complete this project with faith in its success. Dungeon Keeper would not exist if Peter didnt believe as much as he did in the project.

General Information Edit

Game Name	Dungeon Keeper
Platform(s)	PC
Publisher(s)	Tec Toy Indústria de Brinquedos S.A.
Developer(s)	Bullfrog Productions, Ltd.
Genres	Add a new genre Action Strategy
Themes	Add a new theme Horror Fantasy Comedy
Original US Release	June 26, 1997 need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release	know the real date?
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