Niklas Jansson
patreon
Dungeon Keeper
🕑 Added 2023-01-14 21:25:35 +0000 UTCI've never managed to get comfortable with this game but it's still fascinating in some way so I wanted to draw something from it... perhaps a few small-medium-large variants of the enemies (iirc they level up in the various rooms, but maybe there could be variants on top of that). The troll and Orc are mostly model recolours it seems, so maybe I'll have to do some redesigns there. Fairy appears to be about man-sized.
Supposedly the game was designed primarily for competitive/multiplayer, with the single player campaign being an afterthought. Maybe that's why I didn't like playing it so much. It's not that I like campaign play where I have to do a thing which has been set up – I mostly play skirmish and random setups, and preferably wacky imbalanced scenarios that I set up myself. So, when a game is designed for human-vs-human, I often find it to be barren due to balance concerns. For example, I would've enjoyed Starcraft II more if the weird campaign units were somehow available in skirmish but instead the game had to be streamlined or some min-maxer would immediately spread ideal strats in the meta discussion spaces. I also like asymmetrical play with is a bit of a no-no in competitive.
Will take a look at DK2 tomorrow. DK2 changed the designs a little bit.
Edit:
I've added some more figures. As for thoughts on the game aspect, I think I'd prefer to play something like the early version for Dwarf Fortress, replacing DK's simplistic resource system with chickens, golds and simple rooms. With hectic combat being less of a focus, the creatures could take on roles/professions or in some cases work as producers (spider silk, slime types, dragon furnaces, magma/water construction). The more natural looking creatures like beetles and flies could work better for outdoor/daylight patrols (with enemies coming in from off-map).
Mobygames has a few interesting reference pics:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dungeon-keeper/promo
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dungeon-keeper-2/promo
I also found an archive with sprite dumps many years ago but not sure where. No wall textures though. The DK walls are sort of engraved like in Dwarf Fortress, but with a bunch or random burlesque figures.
There are a whole bunch of DK clones out there but most are very cartoony with various gamey unlocking systems. Thinking about it... I think I'm one of those players who prefers building and setting things up, even when playing games not really built for it, and there needs to be a sense of achievement there, and a DF-like crafting system handles that better than abstracted unlocking.
Comments
Pp
your links are ... broken
Florian Wortmann
Youre always suppressing us with these unique takes 😍😍😍
