Dungeon Keeper

aka: DK1, Dungeon Keeper: Evil is Good
Moby ID: 156
Windows Specs

Description official descriptions

Dungeon Keeper takes real-time strategy into a fantasy setting. You command a dungeon and its hellish minions, and must take them to glory against the hated good guys. You must use your gold to build a fortress and weapons to attack.

As well as being able to rotate the 3D view, and control the light source, you can enter the direct viewpoints of your men, to see life through their eyes (one character's mode goes into black and white for this).

Spellings

  • 地下城守护者 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 地城守護者 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

150 People (116 developers, 34 thanks) · View all

Design
Project Leader
Lead Programming
Lead Artist
Programming
Support Art
Engine Design
Navigation System
Music
Sound
Lead Level Design
Testing Manager
Associate Producer
Network Programming
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 33 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 139 ratings with 6 reviews)

It's good being evil

The Good
Dungeon Keeper is an interesting mix of war game and building Sim. Careful planning is the only thing between your success in crushing the ubiquitous forces of light and loosing to an army of pixies. Different units interact differently with one another, some forming tight bonds while other will try to kill and/or eat each other lending an extra dimension past the castle building and trap laying. The Sacrifices in the temple are a great additional way to gain special minions and the temples themselves are amusing as you are the "god" featured in them. The multiplayer support makes for fun times and great LAN parties while breathing extra life into this game.

The Bad
The graphics never have been the greatest and look very dated by today's standards, though the Gold Edition does come with an upgrade to fix this. First-person controls are difficult to use at times and it is easy to become disoriented while using them. This is a problem as there are parts of the game that require first-person interaction to be able to complete them.

The Bottom Line
Dungeon Keeper is a great game for those tired of the same old good guys always win war game or for those looking for an interesting twist on an old genre. Despite the rough first player controls (that you won't need most of the time) and aging graphics, it's still a wonderful game full of tongue-in-cheek humor for fans of both war games and Sims.

Windows · by lamoxlamae (3) · 2008

Be the bad guy. Crush the forces of good.

The Good
First of all, I liked the twist of being on the side of evil. There are many different creature types that can be lured into your dungeon and trained to high levels to ultimately destroy the good heroes or other keeper foes. You have the ability to change the view angle, the lighting, the shadows, and much more. The multi-player is a good touch to let you play against actual human intelligence. There is a good amount of spells that can be researched in the library. Also, a lot of traps and dungeon accessories can be built in the workshop and placed where you need extra defense.

The Bad
The artificial intelligence in this game leaves alot to be desired. Not only did I find it too easy to beat my foes, but some of the stupid things the a.i. would make my own creatures do was enough to make me want to pull my hair out. The only real challenge to this game is keeping control of a level ten reaper, good luck!

The Bottom Line
Over all, I did and still do enjoy playing this game. I would recommend it to anyone who likes strategy games.

Windows · by syd67_67 (3) · 2001

A trip down into the heart of evil

The Good
Some games have a pretty face with fancy graphics and all the latest 3D buzzwords, but when I am looking to have a relationship with a game, I generally look at one thing as most important, personality. Dungeon Keeper is literally bursting at the seams with personality. The game wallows in it's own evil with emphatic glee. You get to play the bad guy/girl for once and enjoy all of its guilty evil pleasures. Workers not going fast enough, give them a slap with your 'hand of evil.' Want to explore your filfty cavarens yourself, posess the body of one of your minions and go exploring in a first person view. A really cool feature of this is the fact that each species of minion has a different view point. By an imp and you are half the size of everyone. Be a Hellhound and see everything in black and white. Besides this personality and style, the game had decent graphics, nice sound and really fun game play.

The Bad
I would have liked a more open -ended gameplay mode. One that you could just build a foul dungeon and have to fight off the different heros that would attack you. The current levels are very much limited because most have a fixed supply of gold. Another issue is that the ability to pick up and drop your creatures any where, while very convient and good part of the game, limits fighting to dropping all of your minions at one spot and letting them have at it. Also the first person perspective while fun only has limited usage in the game.

The Bottom Line
Dungeon Keeper is SimCity in He*l with a lot of other genres thrown in. Think of Diablo, but being Diablo: laying out your dungeon, commanding your hoard of imps to dig out the rock to create a cesspool of evil, fighting the good pure knights that dare enter your domain, and taking control of the realm to bring about misery. It's all evil fun. Your minions have minds of there own though. You need to make your dungeon the penthouse of dastardly depravity and corruption to attract the horrid beasts. You can then drop them into different rooms to assign them task, but they leave to rest, and eat, or if they get bored or angry. Keeping your minions happy is a key element to the game. The only way you can make them do exactly what you want them to is to literally jump into there minds with the pocession spell.

Graphically the game was slightly behind the times even when it was released (due to a 3 year development time). In the normal isometric mode you can zoom and pan freely and the graphics though low resolution look ok (640X480 is the highest resolution). The sound is very good. The game runs fast on the reccommend system.

All in all, a highly reccommend game for those who want to be a bastard. Great fun.

DOS · by Andrew Grasmeder (221) · 2000

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
has been published by EA, not Tec Toy? Henning Knopp (38) May 11, 2020
Additional credits? Pseudo_Intellectual (66274) Feb 23, 2017

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Dungeon Keeper appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

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Jason Musgrave:

On a personal note, at the Software Etc. that I was working at when this came out, the manager felt the tagline of "Evil is Good" may offend some people (we were connected to a Barnes & Noble bookstore) and purposely placed the price tag over the word "Evil" on every box. The result was that the box would read; "Dungeon Keeper.... is Good".

Avatar

The arch-enemy of Dungeon Keeper is the Avatar from the Ultima line of games, specifically his in-game appearance from Pagan: Ultima VIII. In the official hint guide for the game, under the profiles for the Avatar "Lord of the Land", the graphic for him is the same used in the introduction of Ultima Online. (The same visage was also used in Ultima IX: Ascension).

Creatures

Each creature has a different style of sight in first-person view. For example the fly has a insect like hex shape, and the hellhound sees in black and white.

Development

Dungeon Keeper is probably one of the most anticipated games which Bullfrog has worked over three years for its development. It was first shown to the public in the spring of 1995 but was released just before the summer of 1997. Dungeon Keeper was also the last Bullfrog game Peter Molyneux had worked on. He then left Bullfrog and founded its own company called Lionhead Studios.

Extras

In the CD-ROM of Dungeon Keeper, some goodies in the goodies directory can be found.

German version

In the German version all specific torture animations were replaced with the generic tent animation.

Monk

The chanting monks seem to sing "norske svin", which is Danish for "Norwegian bastards".

References

One of the most expensive spells in the game is the one that penetrates an opponent's reinforced walls, called Destroy Walls. When you cast the spell the advisor's voice said, "Penitenziagite." This sounds a little like "penetrate" but is in fact an extremely obscure reference to Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose. "Penitenziagite" was the rallying cry of a (real) heretical 14th-century band of monks who murdered wealthy churchmen on the grounds that Jesus had commanded poverty.

Soundtrack

All of the music for Dungeon Keeper, including the opening movie sequence, are available on the game CD as Redbook Audio.

Awards

  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #42 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #47 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1998 - The "Haste Makes Waste" Award

Information also contributed by Andrew Grasmeder, Ernest Adams, Indra was here, Maw, Jason Musgrave and PCGamer77

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  • MobyGames ID: 156
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by doj.

Macintosh added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Accatone, CaesarZX, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Rola, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack.

Game added June 9, 1999. Last modified March 6, 2024.