At a glance...

Impire preview

The Dungeon Keeper theme continued in our fourth and final appointment at Paradox, where we saw a great game called Impire. Rather than the freeform approach taken by A Games of Dwarves, this title takes a more stricter appropriate when adopting the dungeon manager format; this is the classic Dungeon Keeper which fans know and love in a shiny new wrapper, with some neat ideas along with the way. The premise of Impire is that an evil wizard has summoned the demon Báal-Abaddon to the human world, but it gets trapped inside the body of an imp (hence the pun on imp in the game's title, you see). This also means that he gets bossed about at every turn and is pretty much under the whim of this nasty sorcerer.

Like Dungeon Keeper of old you get to dig your way through mounds of earth to build an evil lair, but rather than hunting for specific rocks, you're concentrating on designing the layout of your base. Choosing from a list of rooms, you can place them in the world to achieve various tasks, such as a fungi room for obtaining food. This looked great, and as most of the main rooms are fixed sizes and layouts, you are able to create a fully functional dungeon pretty quickly. This allows Impire to give you that Dungeon Keeper feel whilst moving the focus away from room construction and over to unit management, because the control of minions and attacking creatures/heroes are at the heart of the game.

Whilst trapped in the body of an imp, it doesn't mean that our demon friend has lost all of his skill-set. He is able to command several squads of minions which can be formed of whatever units you decide. There were a number to choose from, although it depends on what rooms have been built and what level the dungeon lord was at. As you level up your imp, you get to be able to control more squads. You can then send these to fight the incoming monsters that attack your dungeon; a wandering hero appeared in our session and so we quickly teleported out units (costing us vitality) over to them to take them down. Mixing and matching these squads grants perks depending on the combination (such as a low critical hit debuff or a rage ability). These squads aren't free though, and you need to use treasure as a form of upkeep and can use it to purchase new squads. The dungeon lord himself can also be upgraded and starts off weak, but grows stronger over the course of a match with later upgrades allowing him to temporarily morph back into his true demonic form.

Combat isn't limited to your dungeon, though. What really caught my eye about Impire was the ways in which it took the game beyond the dungeon. It did this in two specific ways. The first way is the location of the dungeon within the context of the world. The developer showed us the world map, which shows the location of the dungeon in relation to other points of interest. As dungeon lord, you can command your squads to raid these locations to collect precious resources or to complete quests. Your squads take a predetermined amount of time to reach these locations (you can see a simple icon representing them head out to the location on the map) and unlike like when you're in your own dungeon, you can't teleport them back; you have to wait for them to travel, so effective squad management is key. These locations aren't just pins on an old-looking map either; when your squads arrive you can view the action yourself in the same Diablo-style viewpoint as before, which we were shown when the demonstrator carried out a raid on a dig site. These world maps are randomly-generated every time, so we can see the potential for a lots of interesting games. The second interesting concept of "beyond the dungeon" was the inclusion of an area around your lair. You are no longer just building in an empty void as your dungeons have entrances. You can send your squads out here too, at which point Impire becomes more like an RTS or action-RPG, allowing you to explore the neighbouring terrain. Fog of war obscures this area, so you really do have to explore to find what's out there as various exciting things await. You'll also get to meet NPC's, some of whom will even offer you side quests.

Another interesting concept was the inclusion of achievements. These aren't game awards in the traditional sense though, but instead occur over the course of a match. Whilst they didn't go into specific examples, these effectively work as a checklist to ensure that you are aiming towards certain goals. Completing these tasks and earning the associated achievement grants you tech points that you can use to unlock new abilities. We also got to see a little bit of the multiplayer mode where players build their own respective dungeons, but then they all exit out into the same common area. The mode we saw was essentially 'king of the hill' with players sending their squads against one another (although an alliance between some players is possible, so watch out!). As part of this we were also introduced to another playable race, the fiends. This gave our dungeon a completely different look aesthetically, with glowering runes covering the corridors. We weren't shown too much about them, but one of the key features of the fiends is they can't heal in the traditional sense; instead you must sacrifice some creatures so that others may absorb their energy and recover.

Impire really impressed me and there were a number of neat ideas clearly visible over the course of our half-hour session. The developers think that they've got a lot to appeal to fans of this genre, and they know exactly who they're going after with this game (which was illustrated by the heavy metal references which sadly went over my head). It was great to see Cyanide Studios coming up with exciting new concepts over the top of a traditional dungeon management game, and it really makes the player think more about their dungeon in the context of the world around them. The game is set to be released in early 2013.

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