Augh, what a game, just an absolute classic on the PC.

Forget that this abomination exists, THIS is the Dungeon Keeper you want to play.

Or this one but you know, one game at a time.

Today we’re looking at the Bullfrog game released in 1997 for MS-DOS and Windows PCs,

a timeless game from the days when Peter Molyneux stuff was something to be cherished

and praised with no question.

Yep, this is a game designed by Molyneux at his best, and just going by the box art alone

you get the feeling it isn’t taking itself too seriously.

Aw it’s a NICE toothy demon, the kind of guy that’d go out of his way to make you

laugh while he’s eating your face.

On a collector’s note, this is the original European release that I have here.

I actually like this box a little more than the American one, which has different logos

and artwork, and features the tagline “Evil Is Good.”

Unfortunately mine doesn’t have the gatefold cover from that one but hey, you win some,

you lose some, everyone dies in the end.

Inside the box is another story though, with one of those super classy centered cardboard

cutouts for the jewel case.

And the game disc itself is pretty excellent on its own, but then you get to the reference

card, which... haha

I don’t know even how they call this a card, it’s 30 pages long!

Then there’s the manual, which is a beefy 78 pages of instructional bliss.

All black and white, but all great information going into more than enough detail about every

detail of the game’s details in great detail.

And don't forget the Deeper Dungeons Mission Disk, an expansion featuring 30 more challenging

levels, graphical and AI adjustments, and was later sold together with the original

game as Dungeon Keeper Gold.

Dungeon Keeper begins with an intro video showing the dungeon you’ll be keeping, along

with the kind of folks you’ll be defending against.

You know, classic fantasy archetypes like knights, archers, warriors, and wizards. D&D-kind of stuff all

of which is just cannon fodder for the delectable demon-spawn you have fighting for you.

And yep, we’ll be taking a look at this lower-res MS-DOS version for most of the review,

even though it’s not as graphically intensive as the higher-res mode or Windows 95 Direct3D version.

I like chunky DOS games, so sue me.

Anyway, off with his head, and then onto the main menu, where you’re given a choice to

play single player or multiplayer.

Gameplay in each mode is largely the same, so we’ll be seeing single-player footage

in this video. Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning here you can also play a skirmish mode against

AI opponents in multiplayer using the “/1player” command line option.

It’s an awesome feature that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking, so hey, the

more you know. ♪ding ding ding diiinnng ♫

Starting a single-player game brings you to a bright and colorful map screen, acting as

a visual guide to a set of maps you’ll play through in a linear fashion.

But the best part about this is the delightfully twisted narrator, who just oozes slimy detail in the best possible way...

Narrator: "Set in the realm of joy, the people of Eversmile are plagued only by aching facial muscles, and not anthrax as we had hoped."

"Eversmile is a disgusting land of good humor and polite frivolity."

The Deeper Dungeons pack on the other hand just gives you a list of maps to play in any order you like.

But it’s meant to be played after you’ve mastered the main game so I guess they figure

hey, you know you want it, so why bother with foreplay.

Speaking of the main event of the night, oh man.

Dungeon Keeper is one of those games that grabs you by the nads right from the beginning,

even if you have no idea what’s going on or what you’re really looking at.

With each new map I love taking a moment to sit back and just do nothing for a minute, admiring the

dark pixelated caverns and taking in that tortured ambient soundscape...

Mmm, it’s like Populous knocked up Quake, I love it.

Bullfrog were masters of building a captivating atmosphere and aesthetic, and this was due

in no small part to artist Mark Healey and sound designer Russell Shaw, the former of

which went onto design the Little Big Planet games, and the latter went onto compose music

and sound for the Black & White and Fable games.

This stuff thoroughly augments Molyneux’s '90s game design in Dungeon Keeper, granting an

experience that leaves a lasting impression even two decades later.

And while there are several real-time strategy games from '97 that still hold up, Dungeon

Keeper is one of those that goes a step further in my opinion.

This is a role reversal of your typical dungeon-crawling fantasy game, and instead of playing the hero,

you play the villain. Or rather, the villain controlling the villains.

There’s no crawling through a dungeon as a hero, you’re creating the dungeon for

so-called heroes to crawl through, in an effort to ensure their swift demise.

At the heart of your dungeon is the... heart of the dungeon, and the goal is to keep this

alive and beating at all costs.

It is a 3D game that can be zoomed, rotated, and navigated pretty much how you’d expect, although

it does feature a set of options to make it play more like an overhead 2D RTS if that’s

more your style.

Regardless of how it looks, the first order of business is to entice your minions to do

things like burrow into the landscape to expand your dungeon, reinforce the walls and build

floors, collect luscious loot and so on.

Seams of valuable gold, gems, and other materials run through the ground, right alongside vats of

perilous lava, hoards of heroes and even competing dungeons, so it’s your job as dungeon

keeper to make sure your minions don’t delve too greedily and too deep.

And unlike many other RTS games, you do this by marking areas and influencing your minions,

rather than selecting and queueing their actions directly.

Each minion is controlled by its own AI, which can adjusted in the options, but

all that's going on here is they’ll do whatever job makes

the most sense in relation to their mood and surroundings.

You can use your god hand to pick them up and drop them somewhere else, or even slap

them because Molyneux has always been really into that I guess, but whether or not they’ll

do precisely what you hope for depends on a variety of factors.

There’s also a somewhat useless feature that allows you to take possession of creatures

directly, which is cool but there’s only so much you can do this way.

Yeah you can fight in first-person but it sucks, so more often than not it’s just

better to take a hands-off approach and let them do their own thing.

Besides, your main job is not to take direct control, but rather to dole out generalized

plans and provide incentives that help them achieve your goals.

A lot of this comes from setting aside areas in the dungeon to become specific rooms by

assigning functions to individual tiles.

For example, creatures need places to rest so you’ll build lairs, they also need food so you build hatcheries,

they can level up so you build training gyms, gold and loot has to be stored in treasure

rooms, if you want to research new tech you build libraries and workshops, and so on.

As you build more rooms and improve dungeon conditions, new monsters and minions will

be attracted to the dungeon and waltz through a nearby portal to do your bidding.

Giant beetles, spiders, warlocks, trolls, dragons, just a wide menagerie of beasties

and demons, they’re great.

And kinda cute actually.

With each new creature comes a new set of things to take care of; sometimes this

is as simple as requiring a certain room to use separate from other creatures, but more

often than not it just means you need more gold.

Demonic voice: "IT IS PAYDAY."

Yep, this is a business operation; even pure evil is a slave to the mighty dollar!

Every so often your monsters will demand compensation, and when pay day comes you better have enough

gold in the treasure pile or there will be hell to pay.

So long as you keep everything in line, then oh man, those pesky heroes won’t stand a chance!

Each map has a different objective of course, but no matter what, at some point you’re

going to be attacked by humans.

Reinforced doors and walls only last for so long against an army of LARPers, and once

they break through and start shouting masculine catchphrases you’d better be ready.

And uh, heh, yeah when the game goes into full-on battle mode, it’s an audiovisual onslaught

of blood, screams, farts, and explosions...

*sounds of blood, screams, farts, and explosions*

The main strategy here really is not in the battles themselves, since the creatures largely take care of the tactics.

It's really in the preparation, and that is a big reason Dungeon Keeper stands out.

If you’ve trained your creatures well enough and get them to the heroes in time,

chances are you’ll wipe the floor with them.

Yeah you can do things like calling down lightning bolts and heal your guys if you have the gold

and spells to do so, so it’s not 100% hands-off during battles, but each unit will still just do what they

do as individuals.

Plop them down near the action and watch with glee as they bash humanity’s heroes into the ground.

I like that this doesn’t rely on frantic mid-battle clicking and dragging, and instead

you can just enjoy all your meticulous planning paying dividends in corpses and sweet loot.

Either that or fail spectacularly, which is something that's definitely going to be happening a lot, too.

Demon voice: "YOU HAVE BEEN DEFEATED."

And that is the main game of Dungeon Keeper.

Build a dungeon, enhance it to attract units, maintain it to keep said units, and bypass

obstacles as they arise.

There’s still just as much micromanagement as you would expect in an RTS, but it’s delegated

to different parts of the game world that aren’t normally addressed in other titles.

Plus, it’s just so packed full of charm and dark humor that I wouldn’t be able to

turn it away, regardless of gameplay.

Everything from the music, to the dungeon announcer, to the masses of noisy chickens

you’ll need to feed hell’s armies just make me strangely happy...

*sounds of noisy chicken masses*

And yeah you’re burning a nice, happy kingdom to ground and torturing creatures so they become

angry ghosts and stuff like that, but when it happens with this kind of cheeky humor

and lighthearted silliness, it’s never serious enough for me to do anything but laugh at

the absurdity of it.

Quite simply, Dungeon Keeper was, and is, something truly special, and it’s all kinds

of entertaining.

And you can enjoy it, too, quite easily thankfully!

Physical copies are really not that tough to come by and it’s pretty simple to run it in DOSBox, but

if you don’t want to bother with that it’s currently available for download on GOG.com

and EA’s Origin service.

If that’s not enough, there’s still a community of players modding the game to this

day, which has resulted in projects like KeeperFX.

This is a fan-made version of the game that addresses several bugs, tweaks some of the gameplay,

and improves various things in terms of rendering and performance to try and provide the best

Dungeon Keeper experience possible on modern hardware.

And I gotta admit, even if I’m a fan of the original DOS game’s aesthetic, that’s mainly because

I’m a crazy ‘90s nostalgia addict with too many old computers lying around.

If I’m honest the experience only improves with the higher resolution and smoother

performance with things like KeeperFX.

So, if anything that I’ve said in this video has you interested, then by all means,

please give Dungeon Keeper a look.

Yeah there’s still the sequel and yeah some people prefer it, but nonetheless there’s

something mighty special about the original and I cannot recommend it enough.

And if you enjoyed this video on Dungeon Keeper, then perhaps

you'd like to see some of my videos on other things.

There's new ones every Monday and Friday here on LGR, so check 'em out if you'd like!

And as always, thank you very much for watching what you just did!