What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?

What Did I do to Deserve this, My Lord? (originally titled "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What did I do to Deserve This?") has you take on the role of the God of Destruction as you help your quite evil overlord Badman conquer the world. Of course, to do this, you need to build a dungeon for foolhardy heroes to navigate and eventually die in. The gameplay consists of what amounts to puzzle based dungeon design and real time monster management. The dungeons you create are thriving ecosystems with it's own food chains and life forms. For instance a stronger monster may devour another weaker monster so that it can grow into a more powerful form or produce more of it's own kind. However, since some of the weaker monsters have special qualities such as being able to spread minerals that all the monsters are born from around your dungeon, it is important to make sure none of your species go extinct. This is especially important due to the fact that newly born beasts are weaker than their older counterparts.

The basic flow of the game is fairly linear. You are given a certain amount of dig points with which to build your dungeon and produce your army. After a certain amount of time has elapsed, a hero will appear to kidnap Badman. This can also be triggered at anytime by the player as well for time bonuses. If you are successful in defeating the hero, you will be able to spend your remaining dig points on leveling up new monsters created in your dungeon, though the less you spend the better your score will be. Your dungeon will persist through many of these bouts, meaning you will not start from scratch every time and will be able to continue adding on to your existing work.

The other characters in the game are of course the overlord Badman himself and the generic fantasy heroes that appear to fight through your dungeon. Badman seems fairly self aware that he is in fact in a game, but that he is extremely outclassed by his antagonizers. He has almost all of dialogue in the game and is the primary source of knowledge of the game's mechanics. If the heroes manage to make it through your dungeon and to Badman, they will begin dragging him along the ground, and if they manage to take him from the dungeon it results in a game over. He also seems to speak in music.

The heroes themselves do not have any real personality outside of some quips from Badman and extra information found in the game's almanac.

The Food Chain

As monsters end up feeding on each other to survive, Holy Invasion sports an ecology of sorts with a simple food chain.

Slime-moss creatures are born from nutrient-infused blocks, and in return infuse their own essence (as nutrients) into the surrounding blocks when they die or pass over them.

A nutrient-infused block, with enough nutrition, can bear Omnom maggots which feed on the slime-moss. Eventually, they will weave cocoons and emerge as Omnom flies.

The Omnoms--and their maggots--are consumed by Lizardmen, which are also born from nutrient-infused blocks (where the blocks are so nutrient-infused that they appear bright white). Keeping a Lizardman alive by maintaining an Omnom population is essential, as they must eat to lay eggs which give birth to more Lizardmen.

A similar relationship exists with magical creatures. When magic-users--including heroes--use magic or die, they spread mana to the surrounding blocks. Like nutrients, mana is key to bearing certain creatures. Little wisps of mana are born from mana-infused blocks, and they behave much like the slime-mosses do, serving a similar function.

A highly-infused mana brick will give way to a vampire-class creature, which---as the Omnoms do with slime-mosses--consume mana wisps to sustain themselves.

Demons, whose existence bolsters the strength of warriors currently on the playing field, also dine on mana wisps for sustenance. In fact, before you summon a demon from a gate, you can ensure that a more powerful demon emerges by letting the gate itself consume mana wisps. This same principle applies to skeletons, which are left behind by deceased heroes and creatures and can be animated to fight for you.