Dungeons is a burgeoning title which is nearly ten years old. I don't know how many of those years it has spent in my Steam games library untouched. I regret not touching it earlier. The scope of this title is rather massive, and it is a significant nod to the all time pc gaming classic Dungeon Keeper.
It is a fun, humorous title that pokes fun at the gaming industry's icons - Diablo, and even lesser known, wonderful titles such as Overlord.
You play the lord of a dungeon. Your goal is to protect your dungeon heart, your life, your treasures, your gold. You build prestige, send goblins to pick-axe through stone to expand your dungeon, and set up traps, monsters, and items to lure heroes into your enclave.
Once you've done that - and entertained them for some time, it's time to be the big bad that invokes game over screens for mortal adventurers. Capture them, throw them in a prison, and extract their "soul points". Use those soul points to decorate and upgrade your dungeon's harrowing abilities to entrap, maim, torture, and kill.
It is a wonderful mix, well presented, with a deep and complex game play system that plays like a cross between The Sims (building your dungeon, decorating it, and designing an optimal flow for treasure seekers), and Diablo-esque games, where you fight foes. There's also some significant tactical and strategic elements, thought, and mechanical elements in this game.
On top of that, there's a skill tree, abilities, attributes, spells, and dungeon upgrades to manage as you progress through the campaign. There's easily dozens of hours of fun in this title, and it is a good game.
However, there's always a catch. The publisher, Kalypso, requires an additional account to play a game that is distributed on Steam, as well as a CD Key in order to allow you to play something that you own. This is a frustrating and annoying double up, and the sort of thing that store fronts should not require.
Granted, I'm glad that this functionality still works almost ten years after the game's release - but what happens if and when they turn off the servers? We probably won't care, and nor will the publisher, because they're busy pushing out sequels, DLC, and enhancements to this series, which now stretches to another two games, which I do not own.
The basic introduction to Dungeon Keeping here is not the classic game it takes its inspiration from - but a modern, complicated take on a genre that does not have a whole heap of titles in its arsenal. I think that if someone made an dark tower defence game, released it on mobile, and said that you were the evil overlord protecting your dungeon from troublesome adventurers, they'd probably make a killing.
That game probably exists, and is out there, only I'm yet to discover it. For now, Dungeons can fill that gameplay void in my life that I wasn't aware existed.