'...Above ground all might be peace and harmony, but deep in the bowels of the earth you rule over a realm of chaos and violence. Your task is to plan, dig and manage Dungeons with which to lure explorers with the promise of untold wealth. You also have to attract an army of evil creatures to do your bidding, and if you keep them fed, housed and paid, you can train them in combat and call on them to deal with interlopers.....'

That's the introduction from the manual ... sound good? well it is.

Dungeon Keeper is the latest release from Bullfrog (owned by Electronic Arts).

Dungeon Keeper is a game with a strange mix of different genres. On one hand its a real-time strategy where you have to build and maintain a dungeon, ensuring all of your minions are well fed and, more importantly, well paid !   You also have to manage a good balance between training creatures to improve their levels, and employing creatures in your library to ensure new rooms and spells are discovered. But .... whilst in combat with other creatures you can take control of one of your creatures for a first person perspective doom style shoot-em-up ! However, be warned you need a machine with good specs to get the full enjoyment from this aspect of the game. On my little P133 it's fairly slow and I've got a 4M S3D Virge video card. Unfortunately this game does not yet support 3DFX cards (I've got a monster 3D and would recommend this to anyone - it's a great card).  There is a sequel coming out, perhaps around Christmas '97, called The Deeper Dungeons which will support 3DFX and make a whole host of other improvements to the game. My personal opinion is that Bullfrog perhaps rushed the game slightly and will be putting in all the extras they didn't have time to finish in this next version.

Some screen shots from Dungeon Keeper

Here's a good starting point for Dungeon Keeper Fans

http://alpha.detotech.co.za/~andre/links2.htm