Impire (dungeon Keeper clone)

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bytes

Molten Core Raider
957
638
Wish i wouldn't have seen this. The game's being released by Paradox, which means "Great idea, really low funding, shitty-ass broken release product that's lacking polish and 2 more years of development". I really don't get it, they have so many potentially nice games, but they either don't care, or just can't see it all the way through.
 

Adam12

Molten Core Raider
2,067
35
They've done Europa Universalis, Magicka and M&B, right? Count me amongst the boners.
 

cyrusreij

Trakanon Raider
1,712
575
They've done Europa Universalis, Magicka and M&B, right? Count me amongst the boners.
This is set in the world of Ardania from that trailer, which is the same world as Warlock Master of the Arcane and the Majesty games. Paradox releases a lot of good shit, I trust them, even if it does take a while to patch shit in at times.

Edit: It is done by the Blood Bowl developers and Paradox is publishing it seems, buy this game NAO! (or on Thursday when it releases, whichever).
 

Lenas

Trump's Staff
7,458
2,208
War of the Overworld also got funded on Kickstarter, so there's another DK clone. Even has a video of Molyneux backing it.
 

Azziane_sl

shitlord
541
1
All the units in the vids seem to be different shades of imps. Hope there's a fat guy and dark mistresses in there.
 

velk

Trakanon Raider
2,512
1,094
Seems entertaining so far. The tutorial is harder than I expected, the first guardian is more like a WoW boss and requires a fair bit of coordination.

The controls annoyed me greatly for a while, but apparently the early stages of the demo locks the scroll keys and camera rotate - a weird choice given I spent ages trying to work out what stupid combo they used to scroll the screen around ( it's actually arrows keys, as expected, they were just locked at that point ).

I couldn't work out what the hotkey is for Baal, which was a little inconvenient.

Oh, everything looking like imps is explained right at the start - summoned demons are given form by their summoner, and the guy who summoned you is a moron ( your character is actually the main imp rather than the summoner ). It looks like you have level up options to change form.
 

Punko

Macho Ma'am
<Gold Donor>
7,912
12,564
The controls continue to annoy in the main game.

Tab to select Baal.

Overall it seems a decent game, though the saving system is kind of retarded - allowing only 1 save per campaign match, and since there are a few bugs with the game freezing or crashing, this doesn't combine well.

If you try to save during a cutscene or event, or when one is coming up, your savegame will be broken and you'll have to start that mission from scratch.

I find it nice that different kind of unit combinations in a squad give the squad special abilities (reduced accuracy on hit, heal squad on death, ...)

Doesn't seem quite finished yet, but for 20$ I'd pick it up again.

Despite having to repeat 1 mission 4 times due to save / crash issues
tongue.png
 

cyrusreij

Trakanon Raider
1,712
575
The controls continue to annoy in the main game.

Tab to select Baal.

Overall it seems a decent game, though the saving system is kind of retarded - allowing only 1 save per campaign match, and since there are a few bugs with the game freezing or crashing, this doesn't combine well.

If you try to save during a cutscene or event, or when one is coming up, your savegame will be broken and you'll have to start that mission from scratch.

I find it nice that different kind of unit combinations in a squad give the squad special abilities (reduced accuracy on hit, heal squad on death, ...)

Doesn't seem quite finished yet, but for 20$ I'd pick it up again.

Despite having to repeat 1 mission 4 times due to save / crash issues
tongue.png
The game has been throwing up errors for me, but it hasn't crashed once yet, I just tab out, close the error, tab back in, resume. Controls are a little wonky, for for the setup there are a lot of nice QoL features, like hovering over certain units/buildings showing a minicam of that area. Reminds me a lot of Majesty 2, with the groups of 4 of mixed units system and the upgradeable armor/weapons. Fun setting though, some of the references did make me laugh out loud a couple times.
 

Dashivax

N00b
114
3
Crashed twice halfway through the second mission, always deletes my save making me start over.

I fucking despise games that don't let you skip their tutorials, so of course this game keeps making me replay it because of crashes.

I may check back on this game in a few months, hopefully the controls are smoother by then at least. Unfortunately this game just doesn't have the charm the Dungeon Keeper games did.
 

Jabberwhacky

Lord Nagafen Raider
412
437
Well shit, I was literally fighting the last boss of the (I think) third map and the game crashed
frown.png
No save or nothing....I am disappoint.

They also seem to have taken a lot of the 'charm' out of DK. I really liked the little things like imps taking multiple swings at rocks to break them down, and then having to do their little imp dance on the ground to convert it to usable space. And here they just poof in a new room like nothing. Monsters going to train and eat on their own added a lot of life to the dungeons in DK, but here it feels like a fucking RTS where you build a base and then send out your army. Maybe it changes later, but so far the only buildings I ever interact with are the kitchen (90% of the time) and the training room (on the rare occasions I lose a unit, 10%). The rest is just a shit ton of stock rooms.
 

bytes

Molten Core Raider
957
638
I TOLD YOU GUYS, BUT YOU WOULDN'T LISTEN!

Look up the other quality titles this studio has put out.
 

velk

Trakanon Raider
2,512
1,094
So, after 10 hours I figure I can give it a fair review.

First up, I haven't encountered any of the performance or stability problems other people have mentioned, so can't comment on that.

What I can say though, is that the game seems to have a fairly critical flaw in the basic gameplay regarding pacing. Basically, from when you start the level, your dungeon is attacked every few minutes by adventurers, which get progessively stronger. This starts off fairly straightforward, they come in through the entrance, you fight them off, set up traps, whatever. Fairly quickly though, they transition to what I fondly refer to as 'the fucking ladders' - in this mode, you get an alert 'new ladders have appeared !' and 1-6 ladders appear randomly throughout your dungeon. From that point you have about 20 seconds to get a squad to them and destroy them, otherwise the adventurers come down the ladder in the middle of your base instead of through the entrance. The absurdly short time to respond isn't as bad as it could be, given you can teleport squads right to the ladders, but if you are busy doing something then it demands immediate drop everything attention. Which runs to the second problem - all your guys have little rage bars, that start at 100 and slowly decay down to zero, at which point your guys become useless. To refill it you have to keep sending them to the kitchen to eat stuff, and teleporting them makes it go down quickly.

Still, this wouldn't be too bad to deal with, if defending your dungeon was what the game was all about - but so far, it seems to enjoy throwing in the RPG elements where you send your squads on long dungeon crawls, with the obligitatory treasure chests that spawn boss mobs when you touch them etc. This meant, for me at least, that I was stuck all the time in a paranoid loop of, wander along a hallway a bit, kill some guys, teleport everyone back to the kitchen, eat up, wait for the ladders, kill the ladders, kill the adventurers, try to work out where the fuck you just were ( did I mention it keeps resetting the camera when you select units/save, pass key points, activate cutscenes, trigger doors to open etc ? ) , teleport back to the hallway, take another few steps, wonder if you are going to run out of time before the next ladders, etc etc. I spent a lot of time waiting around, it was quite annoying.

I'd probably be ok with it, if your defenses could hold adventurers for a bit, or if you could hold them off with the 'B' team while your 'A' team is adventuring, but this seems to be a forlorn dream - you can only have 6 traps, and they range from piss weak to useless. The adventurers have several hundred health and the most 'powerful' trap hits for 50, has 5 charges, can miss, and is frequently resisted. That and, as noted above, if you aren't paying full attention to them, the adventurers just show up wherever they feel like anyway.

Also needs a shitload more descriptive text - I still don't know what the difference between a priest and an occulus is ( they kind of look like beholders ), they both say healer, and occulus does slightly less damage. Some kind of description of why they are different and why you'd use one over the other would be nice.
 

GeneralF

Golden Knight of the Realm
388
226
My OCD goes off the scale in this game every time the camera resets to an odd angle (~every fucking time). The game needs a "reset to 90 degrees" shortcut. Otherwise I'm having fun with it after about the same number of hours as you, though I agree with all the points you're making. For me it was worth 20 dollars because it's what I was looking for and I expected a not-very-polished release, but I'd advise the average RTS enthusiast to wait for a sale.
 

Delly

Trakanon Raider
2,981
622
I TOLD YOU GUYS, BUT YOU WOULDN'T LISTEN!

Look up the other quality titles this studio has put out.
Everyone said it would be bad at first, then it would get patched. Most of their games are pretty decent when patched a few times.