Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Dungeon Keeper. We talk about the weird mix of genres this game presents, and the unique problems that presents to level design and for the player. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: To level 8 (B) and 10 (T)

Issues covered: the genre mix, complexity, narrative genre and setting, Murphy's Law (vs Moore's Law), pulling from their own conventions, balancing difficulty, not knowing if it's scripted, requirements for creatures, needing to read the manual, not knowing what the rules are, explaining things to the player and getting over the hump, what some of the rooms do, knowing when to go, using level design for flow, having a clever level with four wizards, grim places the game visits, dungeon crawling, the impact of audio design on RTSes, a little discursion into dynamic music, musical choices, hearing what your units are getting done, understanding game state from audio, favorite codes from back in the day, implementing cheat code systems, giving players options.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Overlord, Civilization (series), Evil Genius, Chris Corry, StarCraft, WarCraft, Populous, Republic Commando, Dungeons & Dragons, Blizzard, Homeworld, John Carpenter, Russell Shaw, X-COM, mysterydip, Konami, Gradius, Contra, Starfighter (series), Belmont, Penny Arcade, Daron Stinnett, Jedi Knight, Outlaws, id Software, Troy Mashburn, Adventure, Kaeon, Hitman, Bruce Lee, Majora's Mask, Nintendo, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: Play more!

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