Welcome back, Kee–… Underlord. Still getting used to that. War for the Overworld (WftO), the spiritual successor to the Dungeon Keeper series, has finally reached its official release date after being in Early Access for a year and a bit. When WftO hit Early Access, there was very little to be experienced – it was basically a tech demo. I saw the potential in the project though, and I followed its progress over the course of a few months. Updates were infrequent and didn’t add a huge amount to the game, but the work that was being done clearly showed the devs were devoted; I would just have to wait. Their passion and love for the source material is obvious, and the amount of effort poured into the project is pretty fantastic.
Though the opening cinematic doesn’t have shit on the opening from Dungeon Keeper 2. Just sayin’.
The problem is that I’m still not seeing a major difference between what I would call “Early Access” and their idea of an official release. There’s been a huge improvement overall, but it’s far from being finished – the bugs alone make the thing nearly unplayable. I consider it a testament to my abilities as a UnderDungeon KeeperLord that I’ve made it as far as the twelfth mission of the campaign. That isn’t because it was especially difficult gameplay wise, rather that I had to find creative ways of passing each level without too much action lest I cause the game to crash. Again. WftO keels over and has a heart attack whenever a decent battle gets going on screen, and God forbid you should build multiple rooms or objects with particle effects near one another. The game will have a fucking seizure on you before dying completely.
This isn’t the only issue with WftO either, just the one that causes the most impedance to playing the damn thing. The loading times are just obscene, particularly when launching the game. I could start it up and have time to go make myself a coffee and come back before it hits the main menu. Units, gold and other environmental features, among other miscellaneous objects, will intermittently disappear and reappear like malfunctioning strobe lights. Units in your HUD selection bar won’t display correctly, to a point where their names are even displayed as the gibberish code that’s generating it.
“Welcome aboard, prefab_units_firebreatherdefiled_name! That’s quite the moniker you’ve got there!”
There are some issues with minion AI, mostly path-finding problems like having minions run endlessly into an indestructible door instead of going around it. Units on both sides will routinely enter a fugue state mid-battle and stand motionless while they’re cut to pieces, assuming they come to the battle at all. I could go on, and I’m about to though it’ll be about something else, but these issues alone prevent WftO from being a “finished” game. The devs have at least acknowledged that the game has issues, posting a letter to the users alongside the main menu of the game. Aside from pointing out some glaring issues and addressing what they’re doing to fix them, they also say that “War For The Overworld is in a constant state of evolution,” and “there is plenty of room to expand the game.”
For fans of the old Dungeon Keeper series that should be pretty excited because, when the game does work, it is an excellent homage to the series and a great game in its own right. Richard Ridings reprises his role as the disembodied narrator, now known as Mendechaus, who warmly greets you as you open the game’s main menu. There’s a variety of modes to choose from, each in various states of functionality at this stage, but enough that it should keep you entertained for quite awhile when all is working. The campaign, especially, has really set itself apart from its predecessors, continuing the Dungeon Keeper story in all but name. The missions have been imaginative, requiring a lot of skill in minion management, and often extend beyond the same old “build a dungeon, kill some dudes” shtick.
Though the game still makes sure you have a handle on those basics.
The game certainly carries the distinct aesthetic style of the Dungeon Keeper series, as well, right down to the little diamonds on claimed tiles. Imps, now workers, still flit about the dungeon carrying out your every whim. Goblins are now Gnarlings and Warlocks are now Cultists, but they still get summoned through a demon-y looking portal after attracting them to your dungeon by building rooms. You can still watch your minions move about and utilise your dungeon, even possess them if you want to move through it yourself, eating ch–micropigs, training, whatever. There’s a great amount of detail in how all these characters act, fight, move and otherwise interact with the world around them.
WftO’s design is still very true to the Keeper series, keeping many of the same RTS elements its predecessors used for both its gameplay and design. I would have liked to have seen a bit more innovation here though, as Dungeon Keeper’s unit selection and management was quite clunky, and WftO has only marginally improved things. There’s no way to group selected units, or even select multiple units on the field at all. Instead, you have to “cherry pick” the units you want from the HUD at the bottom of the screen. With the game’s current lag and crashing issues, that method is almost impossible. There are some new rallying options that help to organise your units’ movements, which I’ll go into when I get to a full review of the game, though they do little to assist during battle.
“No, no! Hit the Purple one – THE PURPLE ONE!”
What WftO has achieved is a bit of sense in the chaos of big fights, if not in the actual fighting itself then at least in the role of each unit. The campaign does a pretty swell job, for the most part, of introducing you to each minion and their uses. That being said, there were still a lot of glaring gaps in my knowledge by the end about the various upgrades, abilities, structures and units that feature in the game. I’ve not finished the campaign as yet, however, so there’s still more that could be crammed into the last few missions (if the game will allow me). There’s always the possibility that the campaign could be extended in the future, which I’d like to see happen because I feel like they could do a lot with some of the currently unused content.
Honestly, that’s the big take away from all of this at present: The game still has a lot of potential, and the devs are clearly working hard, but a full release was premature. For fans of the old Keeper games, know that the sequel/spiritual successor is in good hands and that an excellent game is coming. For anyone who is expecting great things of it now, however? Well, you should probably be more prepared for an awesome looking slide-show once the fighting begins, and I certainly wouldn’t drop thirty beans on it at this stage. WftO has come a long way since it first hit Early Access, it has a little ways to go yet, and in a few months I look forward to reviewing a completed version of the game.
