Impire is a New Dungeon Keeper-Alike

It's tough to be the little guy, especially when you used to be a badass demon before you were trapped in the tiny body of an imp. That's the basic premise for Cyanide's freshly announced dungeon strategy game, Impire, which draws heavy inspiration from the likes of Dungeon Keeper and Overlord. And like in those classics, players get to take the reigns of an evil being working to put an end to would-be treasure hunters and do-gooders.


My brief hands-on time earlier today started off easily enough: I began with a small dungeon and a handful of imps, and by the end I was in control of a small army and getting ready to go above ground and wreak havoc across the land. So is it easy to get the hang of? You betcha.

The basic rule you'll need to understand about this type of game is that a dungeon cannot operate without peons -- or in this case imps -- working back-breaking labor. I assigned them to such tasks as picking mushrooms (the currency of Impire) and repairing my nursery, a structure used to summon scouts and warriors to defend my dungeon from intruders. Each of the rooms, from the kitchen on down to storage rooms, must be worked by a single imp to produce units and collect resources.


The art direction, from what I've seen so far, is pretty detailed. I could zoom all the way in and see the imps picking mushrooms or stir a magical cauldron to summon troops (I'm not sure how that logically works, but it does, okay?). While it was great to zoom in and see them toiling, I found myself playing more from the Commander Mode viewpoint for a better aerial view of my dungeon.

From that vantage point it was easy to determine what areas of the dungeon have fallen into disarray from recent attacks, or if I needed to assign an imp to a room. Considering Impire's in a "pre-pre-alpha" state, a lot of the UI hasn't been implemented yet, but hopefully it'll have all the usual bells and whistles -- at the moment it's missing alerts for when one of my minions has been killed or a supply room needs some tending to.


Once I got the hang of managing my imps it was time to spend all of that mushroom currency that I'd been building up and start building an army. After a few short minutes I had a group of eight warriors that was able to clean out my dungeon of intruders and start to make their way above ground. The battles themselves didn't seem that complex, which at this early state just meant that I had to group my soldiers together and just pounce on any interlopers. Hardly a challenge, but again this game is still in a really early state. We'll be keeping a close eye on Impire to see how it progresses. Right now it's on target for an early 2013 release.


Spy Guy says: I'm all for another attempt at replicating that Dungeon Keeper magic, though my file on Cyanide's last few games -- the two mediocre-at-best Game of Thrones games and the outright bad Confrontation -- have me worried. Do you think a developer can turn itself around, or is it a lost cause?