Prepare to Unleash Your Devious Side as Kalypso Media Announces “Dungeons”

Think you can hack it as an evil Dungeon Lord?

Bracknell, UK – 12th August 2010

Kalypso Media, a global publisher of award-winning PC and console games is pleased to unveil Dungeons, an all new strategy simulation title for Windows PC which will take players on a devious adventure through the depths of the underworld. Prepare to have the roles reversed as you play a despicable Dungeon Lord whose job is to create fiendish dungeons to lure and trap heroes who dare to try and steal your treasure. Dungeons is currently in development by Realmforge, a Kalypso Media studio and is scheduled for release in Q1 2011.

Dungeons follows the mis-adventures of the foremost of all Dungeon Lords, who spends his time luring heroes into his labyrinthine creations with the promise of treasure and a good fight -- only to be trapped by his ingenious devices. Once they are in his grasp, our Dungeon Lord must look after and cherish his new found prisoners until they are more comfortable with their surroundings because come the “harvest”, happy heroes have more precious soul energy for you to gleefully extract via foul prisons or twisted torture chambers!

In Dungeons, our protagonist falls victim to a devious plot hatched by his vile, nasty and thoroughly vicious ex-girlfriend and finds himself at the bottom of the underworld hierarchy and the top of the dungeon pile which in this world is about as bad as it can get. Our Lord must have his revenge, and make his way back down the dungeon levels to his rightful place -- but first he must deal with his new bosses, the three despicable Dungeon Lords who stand in his way.

At his disposal are his dim-witted goblin minions who dig tunnels and build rooms to lay out his lair and trap ever stronger and braver heroes who dare to enter, not forgetting to plot his revenge against his ex-girlfriend and his new bosses who think it’s great fun to bombard him with useless tasks. It goes without saying that a malicious and sneaky creature such as our Dungeon Lord has more than a few tricks up his sleeve. Revenge will be sweet indeed.

Features

• Get ready for a fight! Lure 10 different hero classes into your dungeon where 15 different monsters lurk in the darkness.
• 20 challenging campaign missions demand all your cunning to succeed. Survive them – and there's still the custom game waiting for you
• In a dungeon there's only one way you can go and that’s down. Conquer three different underworld levels and the bosses who guard them to become the one and only Dungeon Lord
• Prison cells and torture chambers are at your command and ready to capture your next hero and steal their precious soul energy
• Create the dungeon of your dreams (and heroes’ nightmares) with 50 different objects at your disposal
• Wimpy goblin workers are awaiting your orders to create your next diabolical dungeon masterpiece
  

For more information on Dungeons please visit http://www.kalypsomedia.com

Those ex-girlfriends can sure be nasty. Nice pics.

very nice, just remember that the heroes should always seem so 'goodie goodie' that you generally want to hurl hehe

That is what I loved about Dungeon Keeper... making fun of those people who believe in a general 'spirit of good and evil' where good is always 100% good and evil is always 100% evil... the world is black and white, the first sign of evil in someone's heart must mean they are 100% evil...

You get the idea

- Alex

Can't wait to play the hell out of it.
Dungeon Keeper is one of my favourite games of all time.
Please dark gods of game dev make this game a worthy successor to Dungeon Keeper.

I'm really ecited about this. The 12 years waiting for DK sequel appears to be ending. Anybody has an idea about game mechanics and if there's the possession spell?

I wish Realmforge all the best and i'm waiting for a good dk clone

Iam not sure if i have to be happy or not. When i first heard of MUD TV i was in cheerful mode.

When the game finally got released it got nothing but bad reviews and many users have trouble playing the game.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mud-tv
http://www.outofeight.info/2010/05/mud-tv-review.html

I was wondering if Realmforge is capable of creating good games?. I hope that both the Dungeon and Airline Tycoon II would be a good game.

Hello all!

I was thrilled to hear about Dungeons, as DKII is one of my all-time favorite games and NO ONE seemed interested in doing another one (other than turning it into an MMO.)

So I've done my duty and spread the word far across the 'net.

A couple things I've read from others who have seen the early info:

-The UI looks crowded.

-Some question why the mini-map is like, 8-bit.

-Many hope that Dungeons will preserve the dark humor of the DK series.

-Others hope the humor doesn't get too cheesy.

-15 creatures sounds like a good start, but I think all of us would appreciate more...either added in closer to release or added as content packs later.

-Many are concerned with sound engineering. The SFX and atmospheric sound of DKII sold a lot of the game to players. Here's to hoping it's just as good if not better.

-I'm personally hoping the sandbox dungeon mode isn't as restrictive as it was in DKII. I'd like to have total freedom, and not be forced to do objectives in the sand box mode, or have lots of terrain features that eat up the amount of space I can build on.

-Random map generation of a sort. All of DKII maps were designed before hand. Using a random map/feature generator would give Dungeons a lot more replayability than DKII ever had.

-As an English speaker, I hope the localization is good.

That's about it for now, I think. Good luck to Kalypso and Realmforge, I can say without reservation that 'Dungeons' was the single best announcement in gaming I've seen this year.

Some points I can comment on:

• Some question why the mini-map is like, 8-bit.
  Heh, the minimap from the screenshots is of course just a preliminary version, and indeed just color blobs. Will be redone completely.
• Many are concerned with sound engineering. The SFX and atmospheric sound of DKII sold a lot of the game to players. Here's to hoping it's just as good if not better.
  We have a great studio working on sound and music for the game. It's not integrated yet, but from what I've heard so far I'm convinced it will be as good as we all hope. The studio is very enthusiastic about working on Dungeons. You can get a first impression from the teaser trailer shown on the GamesCom (and, I presume, released online afterwards).
• As an English speaker, I hope the localization is good.
  English localization will be done by the same studio that translated Ceville, which was very good, as far as I heard and could judge myself.
  

Thanks for your comments!

Just to let everyone know, I joined the Kalypso forum just so I could post here.

I am majorly happy! Being in the vein of being an original DK and DKII fan, I've always enjoyed 'out-of-bound' building and construction games; like Dwarf Fortress and Evil Genius; although not for the same reasons, as everyone would know.

But there is just something to the 'mood' and that inadvent humor of the great games like DKII and Evil Genius that will be extremely hard to reproduce and get right, so I can only hope with that.

I do have a question though; as its stated several times that you'll be capturing these Goody-Goody Guys to drain their Soul Energy; but for what? Do they provide the magic energy need to use world-shattering spells and magical abilities like those found in DKII?

(14-08-2010 08:45 PM)Viken Wrote:  I do have a question though; as its stated several times that you'll be capturing these Goody-Goody Guys to drain their Soul Energy; but for what? Do they provide the magic energy need to use world-shattering spells and magical abilities like those found in DKII?

The main use of Soul Energy is that you can build special items which make your Dungeon Lord more powerful (in every aspect). You gain more hit points, deal more damage, have more mana, cast migthier spells and so on.

Now that is cool. Sorry if I asked in the wrong forum though, sense I've seen the replies to that question in the other Dungeon's one. This game looks great, and feel free to contact me if you need a beta tester in the near future.

Quote:Heh, the minimap from the screenshots is of course just a preliminary version, and indeed just color blobs. Will be redone completely.

Hey, no complaints from me. I like the 8-bit homage. But I assumed if you guys took the time to put that glass bubble effect on it, you were going to punch it up even more later.

Quote:We have a great studio working on sound and music for the game. It's not integrated yet, but from what I've heard so far I'm convinced it will be as good as we all hope. The studio is very enthusiastic about working on Dungeons. You can get a first impression from the teaser trailer shown on the GamesCom (and, I presume, released online afterwards).

English localization will be done by the same studio that translated Ceville, which was very good, as far as I heard and could judge myself.

Great to hear, thanks for the reassurances. So the trailer isn't viewable online yet, then?

Quote:The main use of Soul Energy is that you can build special items which make your Dungeon Lord more powerful (in every aspect). You gain more hit points, deal more damage, have more mana, cast migthier spells and so on.

So Soul Energy serves as: a building resource, a leveling resource and is used to craft items for your DL? Is gold just for paying off your minions then, or does it also get used for building construction?

Nenjin Wrote:-The UI looks crowded.

Oh.. Actually, the UI is not scaled properly in the screenshot. Imagine the screen enlarged to 1280x1024 and leave the size of the UI-controls the same and you get the idea what the screen will look like. Less crowded ;-)

Quote:

Quote:The main use of Soul Energy is that you can build special items which make your Dungeon Lord more powerful (in every aspect). You gain more hit points, deal more damage, have more mana, cast migthier spells and so on.

So Soul Energy serves as: a building resource, a leveling resource and is used to craft items for your DL? Is gold just for paying off your minions then, or does it also get used for building construction?

Gold as well as soul energy is used for construction. Some buildings (we call them gimmicks) costs mainly gold, others (like the special items mentioned by Chris) costs mainly soul energy. You'll need both resources to be evil. ;-)

I am so excited about this i made an account just to comment. This looks awesome and so true to the game.

In some ways i am glad we got this instead of dungeon keeper 3. Bullfrog where planing to do dungeon keeper 3 above ground and probably would have changed the game significantly. This looks very true to dungeon keeper.

I hope the devs are as big a fans of dungeon keeper as we are!

---

Just a quick question will there be online multiplayer?

Do you dig in this game?

Yes, DeadLee. Its already been said that you'll use your weak, pathetic Goblin's to dig and build rooms.

I just had a rather... interesting idea. Besides just being able to convert or kill the goody-goody adventurers you capture, why not use them as an even bigger resource in the game?

We already know that you gain gold from them, and soul energy when they're captured and drained in various dungeons and prisons. Why not use their dead bodies as the resource needed to increase your population or summon new minions?

Its only an idea, of course, and not a very well thought out one, at that, but hey, its a suggestion none-the-less.

I wish you guys the best of luck in this game. If you are able to give fans of the originals what we are anticipating, then you will have yourselves one of the greatest games of all time.

Really looking forward to this, make it a good one .

Keep the 8-bit map as a option please :O I really like that, it reminds me of Dungeon Keeper 2 and it looks cool.

And this trailer from the gamescom is cool too or?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Z3Ub-Dhdw

Yes it is
Though I would prefer a gameplay video.

(19-08-2010 08:58 PM)Dagon Wrote:  Yes it is
Though I would prefer a gameplay video.

Youtube Wrote:This video contains content from playcast, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

Okay, whats this?

After hearing bits and bobs about another game with the same style of the infamous DK games, I stumbled on this gem of a forum.

Had a quick read.

And then;

Wow, is this best thing ever?

As a lot of you do, we hold the DK series of games close to our hearts. I have played the games to death and even as my level 10 imps carry my corpse to my graveyard and I rise as a vampire I will still play them.

It looks as though the new 'Dungeons' game will be good, if the screen shots are anything to go by.

I look forward to its release and hope it can deliver more then we are all expect of it... it does have big shoes to fill.

Watched the teaser trailer. Looks cute.

I was really hoping for some actual game play demo video however. Is there a total embargo on game play footage, and how long can we expect to wait before we see some?

Teaser trailers are fun and all, but for people that are following this game closely, it's not telling us anything we want or need to know about the game.

For those of you who cannot get to the teaser trailer via YouTube due to the infringment, this has been hosted on GameStop instead. Check it out!

http://gamescom.gamespot.com/video/6274024/

Well, in this day an Age of XCOM (not X-com) and Fallout 3... I am very happy to see someone taking what made a great and legendary game and advancing it while maintaining alot of the core of the previous games.

What I have seen so far of Dungeons has got me excited. And the track record of your studio seems very strong. So I shall follow your game and hope for the best.

How active of a roll directly will we have with the lord / keeper. Are we actually going to take direct control of him or will we be a floaty hand?

Exciting development, I'm looking forward to this. Glad to see its not just a clone too, though lord knows Id be pleased enough with that alone. Best of luck.

" I wish Realmforge all the best and i'm waiting for a good dk cloneSmile "

Same