Impire: Paradox's take on Dungeon Keeper

Paradox has announced a new game called Impire. The comparisons to Dungeon Keeper are obvious. It's now available on Steam and GamersGate. Paradox has found more and more ways to catch my attention lately.

Run your Impire by defending against heroes invading a personalized demonic compound while also sending underlings to the surface to wreak chaos among those who call the land near your Impire home. Utilizing a vast array of minions, deadly traps, and a growing arsenal of wicked spells, players will guide the demon Báal-Abaddon to his rightful place atop the skulls of his mortal foes… just as soon as they can help him escape the body of a pathetic little imp.

Trailer:

Images:
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I'm hopeful they can pull this off. Dungeons was supposed to be a modernised Dungeon Keeper and it was pretty mediocre at best. I'll be keeping my eye on this, I so want it to be awesome.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I'm hopeful they can pull this off. Dungeons was supposed to be a modernised Dungeon Keeper and it was pretty mediocre at best. I'll be keeping my eye on this, I so want it to be awesome.

Cyanide's developing ...

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I'm hopeful they can pull this off. Dungeons was supposed to be a modernised Dungeon Keeper and it was pretty mediocre at best. I'll be keeping my eye on this, I so want it to be awesome.

I think Dungeons was trying to do its own thing but wearing the DK inspiration on its sleeve which gave people some false expectations :\ I played the demo and didn't really care for it. Will have to keep an eye on this.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I'm hopeful they can pull this off. Dungeons was supposed to be a modernised Dungeon Keeper and it was pretty mediocre at best. I'll be keeping my eye on this, I so want it to be awesome.

Dungeons didn't have a single ounce of the charm dungeon keeper, nor did it have doors, or gameplay that made any sense, it was a catastrophe. Dungeon keeper had disco fever ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4sf... ) and tight leathered dominatrix's. It was one of the best games from the golden era of the pc, right before someone had the bright idea to write games in cross platform code where the pc was the unfortunate greatest common denominator.

This looks somewhat promising but seeing as how its been over a decade since computer games were made as well as DK i'll be skeptical.

Seriously if you've never played the whole game ( i've finished it 4 times over the years ) go play it. It will make you wonder where the humor, voice acting, sound effects, music, and game play of 12 years ago went.

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/dungeon_...

The video definitely has a DK vibe to it. Looks like you place rooms of pre-determined sizes though, as opposed to DK's arbitrary room size.

/em whips out his DK2 cd.

Does this still work? Let's find out.

ibdoomed wrote:

/em whips out his DK2 cd.

Does this still work? Let's find out.

I was able to get both games working back when I had XP, and GoG has both as well. I can vouch for their DK1, haven't installed DK2 yet.

If this captures the DK spirit, my wife will have a big happy. She still brags about how many Horned Reapers she could juggle simultaneously. (Answer: lots)

I think heard on the GWJ podcast once that the GoG and normal version of DK2 had problems with Vista/7/64-bit or some combination of those. Might want to do a little research regardless.

Does the cursor become a hand? Can I slap the imps with it?

If not, no sale.

Thin_J wrote:

Does the cursor become a hand? Can I slap the imps with it?

If not, no sale.

QFT.

We have standards and the devs better know this.

Stengah wrote:
ibdoomed wrote:

/em whips out his DK2 cd.

Does this still work? Let's find out.

I was able to get both games working back when I had XP, and GoG has both as well. I can vouch for their DK1, haven't installed DK2 yet.

It installs fine off the CD and I tried it and it worked great. Granted 800x600 on a 30" monitor is ouch. Then I downloaded the 1.3 -> 1.7 patch and the unofficial 1.8 patch, after which the game no longer runs. I didn't troubleshoot beyond that because, well, honestly, 800x600 is painful.

Side note: Evil Genius was a decent game in the spirit of DK, far better than dungeons.

Tanglebones wrote:

If this captures the DK spirit, my wife will have a big happy. She still brags about how many Horned Reapers she could juggle simultaneously. (Answer: lots)

Is... is that innuendo?

ibdoomed wrote:
Stengah wrote:
ibdoomed wrote:

/em whips out his DK2 cd.

Does this still work? Let's find out.

I was able to get both games working back when I had XP, and GoG has both as well. I can vouch for their DK1, haven't installed DK2 yet.

It installs fine off the CD and I tried it and it worked great. Granted 800x600 on a 30" monitor is ouch. Then I downloaded the 1.3 -> 1.7 patch and the unofficial 1.8 patch, after which the game no longer runs. I didn't troubleshoot beyond that because, well, honestly, 800x600 is painful.

Side note: Evil Genius was a decent game in the spirit of DK, far better than dungeons.

I would actually love an Evil Genius sequel. That game had issues but damn did it have style. The original dungeon keeper never stuck on me that well, either so I'm biased.

Edit: oh saw this is in the Ardenia universe, now I know where all those damn monsters game from.

master0 wrote:

I would actually love an Evil Genius sequel. That game had issues but damn did it have style.

This!!! A billion and one times this!!! I really, really, really want them to make Evil Genius 2. In fact I may have to load up Evil Genius again now. Well, when I get home. Hmm, that would make a good ipad game too....

But this could be interesting too. As long as it's better than that crappy Dungeons game.

Dammit you guys I bought Dungeons in the Steam sale. Now I'm having buyers remorse. Where we're you to make me step away from the buy button?

Docjoe wrote:

Dammit you guys I bought Dungeons in the Steam sale. Now I'm having buyers remorse. Where we're you to make me step away from the buy button?

I got it too, but I knew it wasn't a spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper when I bought it.

Docjoe wrote:

Dammit you guys I bought Dungeons in the Steam sale. Now I'm having buyers remorse. Where we're you to make me step away from the buy button?

Yeah from what I understand, if you distance it from Dungeon Keeper in your mind and judge it by it's own merits, it's a competent game in its own right. Having said that, I still haven't been bored enough to play it since I picked it up 6 months ago.

Redwing wrote:

I still haven't been bored enough to play it since I picked it up 6 months ago.

There's a box quote right there!

New trailer:

TotalBiscuit's plays an early build of the game:

Well this just hit my radar.

garion333 wrote:

Cyanide's developing ...

It's not Bloodbowl Cyanide, this is a separate offshoot from Cyanide in Montreal who is developing this. I have very high hopes for this one.

Well, I played the first mission tonight and although it's very much a tutorial mission I had fun. It looks very much like a mix between Dawn of War 2 and Dungeon Keeper. You build the rooms which your minions need such as a nursery to hatch them and a kitchen to feed them. Instead of DK's way of doing it where minions would show up depending on which room you build, in Impire you spawn them after your advisor has researched fallen foes.

To defeat foes, you assign up to 4 imps into squads which you then can assign different duties such as guard you, patrol the halls or go fight bad guys.

Building a room is not as freeform as DK with the premade rooms you put down. It does look like you will be able to build corridors how ever you want though so there's some freedom in how you want to layout your dungeon. Not sure if it matters (like in DK) how you lay your dungeon out since minions seems to be based on fallen enemy research.

I have only played one mission and I still have questions like the advisor states that some of your imps are tired and hungry and need food. I didn't see a way in the UI to show me which squad was hungry (it was evident in the tutorial, but for future use. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually).

I am really, really digging the squad based combat, though. It's really fast moving. Best way to describe it is that I was fighting a big end of level bad guy and he kept healing up and then stomping my little dudes to death. So once a minion fell, you can right click on the icon of the nursery (once you scroll away from a room a round icon with an arrow shows you the direction of the room) and put a bunch of minions to spawn. Once they are spawned, you open the interface to the squads, assign them into a squad and then teleport them to where you are. There's a bit of juggling icons and such and I hope there's a way to hot key all of that, but it's really fast as you can bring in reinforcements super fast this way.

I had one crash to desktop while I was playing.

All in all, I am really really pleased with it. Even though I am not a fan of the cheesy Ardenia humor, Impire really looks like it has some depth and strategy to it. If you are a fan of Dungeon Keeper and Dawn of War 2, I can recommend it.

The always on DRM might be deal breaker for me. Might just be a oversight on their part. You can only save the single player campaign while online.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

The always on DRM might be deal breaker for me. Might just be a oversight on their part. You can only save the single player campaign while online.

I'm more confident with Blizzard being around and having the DRM than a small company like this. Silly move if they close shop.

whispa wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

The always on DRM might be deal breaker for me. Might just be a oversight on their part. You can only save the single player campaign while online.

I'm more confident with Blizzard being around and having the DRM than a small company like this. Silly move if they close shop.

I'd be surprised if Paradox completely leaves the game to fend for itself. If it fails I can see them putting enough money behind it to remove the always on portion. Then again I haven't looked into how much of the game is tied to it, but I fully expect Blizzard to stop supporting Diablo III in the future. Probably 2030, but at some point they will. Paradox seems more likely to work something out where the game can still be played w/o the connection. At some point.

Always on DRM? Bleh. There goes my excitement.

Also they sure seem to be milking that Ardania license for every drop they can.

Haha this was actually interesting was reading a bit on the hacking scene and saw impire. Say what you want about the DRM but apprently it did stop them from hacking the game. Probable only for a couple more days but still interesting.

Tamren wrote:

Always on DRM? Bleh. There goes my excitement.

Also they sure seem to be milking that Ardania license for every drop they can.

Them using the Ardania license so much is weird. I'm not sure if they are trying really hard to start a franchise of it or just find it convenient to have a prebuilt world. Or hey maybe they just like it and find it fun.

Dungeon Keeper 2 is what 14-15 years old? Its still fun to play and not just in a retro kind of way. In that time we now get a second homage game and well, sigh its not that good. The room placement is kinda stupid compared to carving out your own design and still no doors? Seriously WTF no doors? Oh and your minions need direction to eat, thats right they don't move around with little ai minds of their own they have to be told to do pretty much anything. How can a 15 year old game still be better? WTF is wrong with the games industry you have classic titles like Homeworld and Dungeon keeper that are still better than homage games made 15 fricking years later, consoles screwed us all.

Ok rant off the game is not THAT bad and very glad they priced it at $20 if the game was half as good as the animation and lighting, which is outstanding, it would be a stellar game. Just in case a designer reads this and is thinking of making a dungeon builder here is a small checklist.

Doors, seriously doors, have any of you ever seen a classic PnP dungeon? Its hallways, rooms and DOORS.

Monsters that can move around on their own and live in your dungeon, does that really need to be said, is everyone nowadays that incompetent of an AI programmer that you can't write if hunger < 10 go fricking eat?

Sigh just Sigh as a 41 year old guy 13 years ago, when games were at the pinnacle of the PC golden age, we all though it was just going to get better and better, how in the hell did it get worse? I am going to die of old age before the game community can figure out that the very least they can do is just go copy what obviously superior designers did 15 years ago.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Primal PC Gamer Scream

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

jam3 wrote:

*Snip*

Would this be the point where I saw I never really liked dungeon keeper 1 or 2? *Ducks* Also if you want doors go get evil genius, has more doors then you can shake a stick at. I put doors everywhere in that game.

edit: In fact I'm reinstalling it now. Thanks there goes my whole day...