Dungeon Keeper (series)

Dungeon Keeper, is a series of strategy video games released by Electronic Arts (EA). Two games were developed by Bullfrog Productions for the PC in the late 1990s, and a third was in development but was cancelled before release. A free-to-play game for Android and iOS was developed by Mythic Entertainment and released in 2013.

Games in the series

Dungeon Keeper

Dungeon Keeper was released in June 1997. It used a modified version of the Magic Carpet game engine.

Dungeon Keeper 2

Dungeon Keeper 2 was released in June 1999. It used a new game engine that natively supported hardware acceleration. Its predecessor supported Direct3D but only with an alternative executable. The sequel also used full-3D models for the creatures and enemies, rather than sprites.

Dungeon Keeper 3

Dungeon Keeper 3 was in development, but was later cancelled. Some Dungeon Keeper 2 CDs contained a trailer showing some features of Dungeon Keeper 3; among them were above-land battles. One member of Bullfrog Productions stated on his personal website that Dungeon Keeper 3 was going to be named War for the Overworld.^[1] The project was discontinued because, according to Ernest W. Adams (one of the developers), Bullfrog had decided not to make any other real-time strategy games. The decision was, in effect, the end of Bullfrog as a brand; the company had already been owned by Electronic Arts for several years. EA laid off some employees and put the remainder onto other projects such as the Harry Potter line.

Dungeon Keeper Online

1 December 2008, NetDragonWebsoft Inc., a Chinese online game developer, announced it had partnered with Electronic Arts to develop a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Dungeon Keeper license.^[2] The game is slated to appear only in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.^[3]

Dungeon Keeper Mobile

In August 2013, EA and Mythic Entertainment announced that they were creating a "twisted take" on Dungeon Keeper for both Android and iOS mobile devices with a release date set for winter of the same year.^[4]

On 10 October 2013, Dungeon Keeper Mobile soft-launched on Google Play and iOS App Store.^[5] The program became fully available on 19 December 2013.^[6] The game is free-to-play (Freemium).^[7] EA provides an official website (http://www.dungeonkeeper.com) featuring among others a forum and in-game information.

On July 2, 2014 the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned a Dungeon Keeper ad, that stated "GET DUNGEON KEEPER ON MOBILE FOR FREE", for misrepresenting the game. The ASA stated, "From the information available in the ad, players would expect the gameplay progression and their ability to advance to be unhindered by unexpected and excessively onerous delays, and we therefore considered that the length and frequency of these countdown events was beyond that which would be reasonably expected by players."^[8]

Gameplay

Dungeon Keeper Mobile play style breaks from the original model. It is a long term tower defense game played over time similar to Clash of Clans.

Reception

Dungeon Keeper Mobile has received overwhelmingly negative criticism from game critics and reviewers, who cited its overuse of micro-transactions and unfaithfulness to the original franchise. Jim Sterling of The Escapist called it "A cynically motivated skeleton of a non-game" and "a scam"^[9][10] with the game deemed unplayable without spending money to speed up progress.^[11] It has also attracted criticism for its rating system mechanic. After a certain intervals, the player is asked to rate the game. Selecting the "5 star" option forwards the user to the App Store or Google Play rating page, while selecting the "1-4 star" option instead provides a form for emailing feedback to Electronic Arts.^[12] Andrew Webster of The Verge criticized the prompt's claim that "5-Star ratings from you help us provide free updates!" for suggesting that the game's creators will stop providing new content if players do not give the game sufficiently high ratings.^[13] Peter Molyneux, the creator of the franchise, himself gave the game a mixed review, noting that he expected the game to be a standard remake and was impressed with the reinvention EA gave the series, however he was critical of the pacing and reliance of microtransactions stating that "The pace of the gameplay I find terrible." ^[14] As of 10 February 2014, the iOS version of the game has a "generally unfavorable" critical rating of 42/100 on the review aggregating site Metacritic.^[15] On July 10, 2014, the executive vice president of EA Mobile, Frank Gibeau, responded to the game's criticism by claiming "Dungeon Keeper suffered from a few things, I think we might have innovated too much or tried some different things that people just weren't ready for... I don't think we did a particularly good job marketing it or talking to fans about their expectations for what Dungeon Keeper was going to be or ultimately should be." The response soon became ridiculed by several gamers who claimed that Gibeau's response was arrogant and stupid. They also said that the games over-reliance and usage of micro-transactions and rating system mechanic is anything but innovative.^[16]

References

External links

• Dungeon Keeper at MobyGames
• Dungeon Keeper (series) at DMOZ