Dungeon Keeper Mobile: It wasn't made for you

I'm continuing to look for good dungeon making games and decided to give the mobile version of Dungeon Keeper a download.

What's interesting here is that back in 2014, this game was raked over the coals by fans and media who weren't ready for a free-to-play mobile version of the games they had grown to love: Dungeon Keeper 1 and Dungeon Keeper 2. Games, which to be honest, I've never even played. 

(Um, Yeah, I uh, wanted to play them, but I was too busy with other games to give them a shot at the time. *grin*)

Because of this, I did a lot of reading when I downloaded the game, and I found some really good quotes . . . gems of thought about the release as it were.

Is your pocketbook ready to train all these monsters?

To illustrate what I'm talking about, let me quote IGN's review of the game:

"The original Dungeon Keeper thrives on speed and the frantic rush to build your dungeons and set up traps before heroes arrive; under this model, clicking on the campaign maps that unleash the adventurers to face their doom feels more like a pulling the string on a wind-up toy and watching it until it slows down and dies all too quickly. Attempt to play Dungeon Keeper at the pace of the 1997 version, and you'd find that your bank account drains faster than your dungeon's gold hoards after heroes reach them. Having any fun in this game would cost a fortune. "

Probably the harshest of reviews came from Eurogamer which gave the game and appalling 1 out of 10. It was so harsh that Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts, sat down for an interview with Eurogamer at E3. It's an amazing read to be honest . . . especially for someone in the business of making mobile games..  I especially like this particular paragraph:

Who is to blame for that? Don't blame the developers, Molyneux pleaded. They're just doing their job. Instead, point the finger at "analytics people" who impose tried and trusted monetisation techniques on the gameplay, forcing players to do this and that at this time and then in order to get X and Y number of gems. It's a carefully crafted, heavily researched dark art that players of many free mobile games are familiar with. Indeed, for millions of gamers this kind of monetisation is all they know.

This was even further discussed in a Kotaku article that juxtaposed fans of a long standing PC title that had been converted into a free-to-play mobile game. The title of the article itself is amazing: "Welcome To Mobile Gaming, Angry Dungeon Keeper Fans" LOL! 

The article explains Mobile gamers to PC gamers and why this game in particular caused things to come to a head:

"These mobile gamers play for distraction instead of passion. They are passing the time. They aren't as emotionally invested in what they are playing, so when a meter or timer pops up, it doesn't affect them as strongly. They have no experience paying $60 to play a game — to them, microtransactions are the way these things are done.  

They're unwise to the ways of the greater gaming world, and they won't be wising up anytime soon. When they pick up their phone or tablet with gaming in mind, they're going to play. They aren't going to surf the web for forums. They aren't looking for a gaming site to see what new mobile games are on the horizon. They're in their own mobile gaming bubble. Games pop up on their screens. If they look interesting, they will play them. If the game's got the right addictive formula, they'll pay to play. 

They're odd. They're casuals. They're also legion. "

The article comes to a brilliant one-line realization within its apex: "The Real Problem with EA's New Dungeon Keeper — It Wasn't Made For Us" 

It's funny . . . I see harsh reviews of mobile games by PC Players and that line just resonates in my mind "It wasn't made for you."

With all that in mind . . . the Dungeon Keeper I played over last week wasn't a terrible mobile game to be honest, and there was a lot I liked.  It kind of seems like EA might have even backed away from the harsher monetization timers that were originally in the game.  Clicking on a wall of dirt to remove it didn't take an hour . . . it took 3 seconds. I was quite easily able to craft a couple of nice long walkways that would keep my opponents wandering around while the timer ticked away.

Welcome to my dungeon! MUHAHAHA!

I loaded it full of doors and traps and spent the week leveling up my traps and storage bins. Yes, things could have gone A LOT faster if I was paying, but I was taking it like I take most of my mobile games: casually and afk.

There really is no rush here at all to be honest. You build a bit, click to collect your gold and stone, raid a couple other people's dungeons, and log off while your timers are ticking. And honestly, I'm not trying to be the biggest or the baddest in this game, but I must say I loved watching a couple replays where people couldn't 3-star my dungeon. MUHAHAHAHA!

I'm sure I haven't "seen nothing yet" as this game has been around so long that the people at the top of the game who have been playing since 2014 must certainly have crazy impenetrable fortresses. I shudder to think of my skeletons and trolls trying to make it through more difficult player-crafted dungeons.

All in all, this was a nice casual dungeon making distraction from last week.  Probably my favorite "feature" was that you were forced to slap an imp to even load into the game.

SLAP THAT GRIN OFF HIS FACE!

If anything, this experience made me more excited to download the old Dungeon Keeper games and play through them.  Since you can find 'em online now for pretty cheap, they're now on my list of things to play.

Happy Dueling!

Legend of Keepers: Who's the Dungeon Master Now?

Recently I've been craving a good dungeon-maker game. My first thoughts turned to old hits like Dungeon Keeper and the now defunct Dungeon Empires (too bad it's no longer around, I really liked that game), but in hunting for those games, I stumbled upon a little steam game called Legend of Keepers. This particular demo or "prologue" is of a game in development and was pretty fun!

It feels like you should be fighting Voltron, doesn't it? I call false advertisement!

In essence, you've been hired to engineer dungeon room encounters to keep adventurers at bay. It plays a bit like the card game Boss Monster without the complexity.

Play inside your dungeon goes a bit like this:

1. You place monsters in your dungeon. 
2. You place traps in your dungeon. 
3. Adventurers proceed through your dungeon.
4. Trap rooms activate and do damage or reduce morale of adventurers.
5. Monster combat is turn-based and you play back and forth until the adventurers die (or run away in fear) or your monsters die.
6. If the adventurers make it to the final room, they fight the boss of the dungeon and do damage.
7. Choose from 3 random rewards and complete the week.  

I really liked the Ulazra's Quagmire ability. 

Think of your boss at the end of the dungeon as a tower in a tower defense game. If he takes damage from one group of adventurers, he'll still have the damage applied to him when the next group of adventurers attack him in the coming weeks.

Your boss is pretty tough, but can he make it through to the end? No problem!

Ultimately you'll be playing through 52 weeks of the dungeon's life cycle. In a way, the progression feels a little like another game I've talked about, Slay the Spire, but without the mystery and unknown of a branching path and definitely in reverse . . . you're the villain of the story here. After combat, you'll have a few weeks of random encounters, merchants, and monster therapist visits before the next group of adventurer's enters your dungeon.

It's tough work . . . your monsters are gonna need some quality time to get through it.

You use these "off weeks" as time to heal monsters, resurrect them from the dead, improve your traps, and buy new nefarious surprises for your dungeon.

The Circular Saw trap is also one of my favorites. Bzzzzzt! DIE ADVENTURERS!

There can be a bit of strategy here. For instance, you can get an artifact that improves skeleton statistics and focus on skeletons in one room, which could lead to extra bonuses depending on your monster passive abilities.

If you enjoy the thought of making your own dungeon, this is definitely worth the free download, but if you REALLY enjoy the game you can go one step further and get the "supporter's edition" of the game for 5 bucks and unlock a new dungeon boss and dungeon theme.

I'll be looking forward to a full release of the game in the future. Consider yourself added to my watchlist, Legend of Keepers! GG!

Happy Dueling

#Blaugust2019 Day 30 -- Barrowmaze Thursday with The Rock Throwers

Last night was once again a chance to romp through the Barrowmaze dungeon with Jeff Toney taking the lead as Dungeon Master for the evening. Can I just say that it's a bit terrifying when Jeff DM's? He knows the game so well and has the monsters attack so strategically that as a player you're in constant fear he is absolutely going to kill you. And of course the Barrowmaze is terrifying all in and of itself. It was designed to kill you. DEATH DEATH EVERYWHERE!

That said . . . it was the players' night last night, and The Rock Throwers (that's our group's name) managed to come out on top despite Jeff's virtual dice being super mean to us. It's like he's using Devil Dice.

So The Rock Throwers returned down the path we were originally headed two weeks ago, and this time went just a bit further. We encountered a kind of ghost in a room that feared us away, but we recovered, gathered up some of his bones and threw them at him while yelling, "Git! Yer dead, ghost! Now go away!" Gumby, my half orc fighter, isn't really the smartest of characters, but his instincts were pretty on point there, and the ghost disappeared! Lesson learned . . . sometimes you just need to make ghosts realize their dead to make them go away.

We stumbled down the path a bit further and heard chittering noises behind a locked door, so gumby busted it down, Candlewick (A rogue played by Kayly) threw a trap down in front of Gumby and we all groaned when we saw it was three deadly scorpions the size of large dogs. I began to dodge up front, but still took enough damage to spook the group.

Shelack, the tortle druid played by Joel, then pushed Gumby out of the way and transformed into a giant hyena while we shot around him. Gloommist, the Aasimar cleric played by Leah, summoned up a spiritual weapon and began to hack at them from behind.

Things ended up getting dicey for a second when two failed constitution rolls almost meant permanent and immediate death for Shelack, but luckily he used his inspiration to reroll a constitution saving throw and made it. Whew. That was incredibly close!

We finished off the scorpions and found 3 big bags of loot from dead adventurers within the room that ended up being an amazing amount of money for us . . . like 1,000 gold pieces each, and in the Barrowmaze gold equals experience points. Woo hoo, TEAM ROCK THROWERS!

After spending 30 minutes looting the crypt there we headed upwards kind of casually, which ended up being a dirt nap moment for Gumby as he rounded the corner and took 3 arrows to the chest from skeletons that got the jump on us.

Gloommist healed gumby back to full and we dispatched the skeletons quickly after that.

Gumby . . . having learned his lesson about not sneaking out of the dungeon, then went stealth mode and headed toward the exit. Unfortunately Gloommist called out for Gumby because she didn't know where I went, which lead to two sapphire-enchanted skeletons coming down upon the group.

Those Sapphire skeletons are the worst! Once they are defeated, you have to smash their gems in two rounds or they pop back up to full health.

Eventually those fell as well and we made our way out of the Barrowmaze with a new +1 chain shirt, three potions, and a bunch of loot.

All-in-all a wonderful night of D&D on Roll20. Even better, everybody leveled up thanks to our amazing haul of money. I can't believe Gumby has made it to level 3.

Happy Dueling!

Catching up with Althea and Company

I don't know if you caught my small blog post fest last year about Dungeons and Dragons, but I tried to start up a new blog about it, and it kinda died: Althea and Company.

Writing out our adventures to that level of detail and trying to remember everything that happened (and finding the time and passion to do it), was a bit ambitious.  Anyway, we continue to run through our adventures, and I actually started hosting my own game with the same "Althea and Company" crew -- only this time Jeff Toney is the player, and I'm the DM . . . AND . . . Uber wife is also playing with us. yay!

Instead of working through an official Wizards of the Coast production like the Lost Mine of Phandelver, I'm using a lot of one-shot dungeons strung together with narrative. The first two we've run were Giantslayer and King of the Cats by MT Black. Both were excellent, and I think everyone had a great time . . . they slayed the giant and they rescued the King of the Cats. yay!

So next I have my group set to do one of two things. Either they will take on another MT Black one-shot, Wizard in a Bottle, or they will head down an adventure of my very own make. I'm interested in seeing which they take on and how they do. I definitely don't want to kill my friends and family in a dungeon, and I know I typically build things too difficult, but this is a party of five I'm dealing with here, and they actually have the potential to really dish out the damage . . . or really have a bad day with bad dice rolls . . . or, as we found out last week, get completely distracted and not hear that the bad guy just cast the shield spell and start using magic missile.

The Giant adventure was fun, but the only thing that gave them any real challenge were giant crabs. Oh man they struggled on that one.

The King of Cats final battle was pretty fun, and I think I scared 'em a bit when they discovered their weapons were pretty ineffective vs. a wererat, which you need silver weapons or spells to fight.  They were never really intended to fight the wererat anyway. I may have to bring her back at sometime to torment the party, so they can finish her off (especially if they spend the 100 gold it takes to silver their weapons).

Anyway, instead of scribbled notes for my dungeon, I've been typing it out like it's a one-shot, and if all goes well with the group, and they survive the adventure and have fun with it, I may actually try to publish it on a site like Dungeon Masters Guild and see what happens!

I'm not going to type much about my adventure I have planned for them just yet in case one of 'em stumbles upon this blog post, but . . . it's got a couple nasty surprises waiting for them.

Happy Dueling!

Harvest Hannah!!! (oh yeah, and new dungeons)

You know her . . . you love her . . . Ladies and Gentleman . . .

HARVEST HANNAH!

Girl gonna sell you some turkey hats!

In somewhat less exciting news ;p four new dungeons and a whole bunch of new features. Enjoy and read all about it in the Update Notes!!!

. . . I gotta get to level 100!!!

Happy Dueling