Bullfrog in the Dungeon

This was my feeling, too, having no prior history with Dungeon Keeper and buying both titles on sale on GOG in the past year. DKII is definitely easier for the modern gamer to jump into. It also had some gameplay ideas that were novel and not terribly well-developed, but just fun--like being able to possess an individual grunt and suddenly have the isometric real-time strategy shift to a first-person perspective.

> Alas, after the deal was done EA promptly started to pull Molyneux in way too many directions for his liking. He was given a set of executive titles and the executive suite to go along with it, removing him from the day-to-day work in the trenches. <snip> Molyneux was painfully ill-equipped for the role of a glad-handing EA vice president; it just made him uncomfortable and miserable.

I see this all of the time in corporate life: the assumption that someone is good at one role, so they must be suited to the next role up, even if the requirements are entirely different. It's such a shame that we're not better at figuring this out as a race, as it leads to so much friction with people being promoted to roles they're not suited to for a variety of reasons, and the negative organisational consequences as a result.

Back then, this type of complaint would simply not have crossed anyone's mind, not even in people who didn't like the game.

I played it from start to finish when it came out and thoroughly enjoyed it (and did it again about a decade later).

Then I did the same with DK2 in '99, though I mostly remember the "Disco Inferno" gag more than anything else about that game.

I guess the first one made a more lasting impression.

The 90s were a special time when it came to video games. I'm a bit saddened that we are unlikely to repeat that era. There are some great games today too, but none of them capture that same zeitgeist.

DonHopkins on March 17, 2020 | prev | next [–]

Bullfrog's classic game "Theme Hospital" had really great emergent vomit cascades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69QTjTvp1w

simcop2387 on March 17, 2020 | parent | next [–]

Two Point Hospital does fantastically as a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlaOYMU8qA

DonHopkins on March 17, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]

Cool, thank you! I'll check in and check it out. (Installing it now!) Does it have a "Bloaty Head" treatment? ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M

I played a LOT of Theme Hospital when working on The Sims 1, and aspired to make the Sims editing tools as easy to use and "clicky" as Theme Hospital was. That and some of Peter Molyneux's older games like Dungeon Keeper, with architectural editing and a lot of independent characters running around at the same time, had a lot of influence on The Sims.

* War for the Overworld: a modern version of Dungeon Keeper

* KeeperRL: Dungeon Keeper but as a traditional roguelike

* Two Point Hospital: modern Theme Hospital

* Galacticare: Theme Hospital in space; the big mechanical difference is that different alien species have different requirements

* Project Hospital: Theme Hospital with realistic treatments and multiple floors

It's really fun to read through all the work they have done https://github.com/dkfans/keeperfx

I loved the concept, and spent many hours playing it, but actually progressing properly never really clicked with me, I generally resorted to either playing early easy levels or cheats to experience more of the game.

Unfortunately it's also a game that's slightly too flawed to enjoy as a "remastered" game.

But the aesthetic and the general vibes of the game were great.

The whacky hospital hijinks may draw you in, but at its core it is a person-flow simulator; how do you get your patients through increasingly complicated layout scenarios? Which is way more fun than it sounds. Not sure the fun lasts long enough for anyone to exceed the base scenario, though, not sure the DLC is of much value honestly.

(Be sure to poke at the quality-of-life improvements that are a bit buried, such as the ability to template rooms, and copy already-existing rooms, without having to completely recreate them each time. It's worth the time to fiddle with. Also don't miss that you can create non-square rooms.)

Dungeon Keeper has had several attempts at spiritual revival. None of the ones I've tried hit it but I have not tried them all. The original has the Quality without a Name that nothing else, even its sequel in my opinion, has quite managed to capture. Whether or not a modern player coming at it for the first time would agree, I don't know. Mechanically and intellectually, I agree with Peter's own assessment of the game as given in the article, but at the time the QwaN overcame the quite non-trivial mechanical issues somehow. One of the very few games my wife has clocked much time with. I think a lot of the attempts to recapture it end up having the mechanical flaws with the design but without the QwaN they can't overcome the issues.

One of the biggest issues is that digging is too easy in DK, but it has to be to work at any reasonable speed. So it becomes too easy and too permanent to become directly exposed to your enemy, resulting in a situation where the first skirmish with the enemy essentially determines all. This skirmish involved neither strategy nor tactics, either, as the combat engine is not amenable to much beyond "what monsters are allocated to this fight", and often the only practical answer is "all of them, as fast as I can gather them". The first game "solved" this by allowing you to fortify walls, but then the fortifications were completely impenetrable to computer players, which caused its own problems, turning "turtling" into the plainly optimal strategy whenever it is possible. (Humans had a spell that could de-fortify walls so it didn't work in P2P. As with many games, P2P sort of by default fixes a lot of balance issues by simply ensuring that the humans are on the same level by default, even if the underlying game is itself dubious.) The second game tried to fix it by making the fortified walls not be impenetrable, but merely "slowing down" the enemy somewhat effectively has no result. The game mechanics are very effective at building dungeons, and the "survive waves of adventurers" levels work OK, but the mechanics are not very good at combat between two dungeon masters and it's not clear to me that it is fixable without an overhaul so major it's not the same thing anymore.

I spent best part of a decade at a creative coworking space literally in the room directly below the original Bullfrog offices. Met some excellent people there & got to hear a lot of stories.

Here[0]'s a pre-covid pic I just found of Bullfrog's original front door mat, here acting as the backdrop to my temperamental espresso machine.

Good times.

[0]: https://imgur.com/a/EtuzIGf

I think populous or theme park were better games.