Note: This interview was conducted before the PS4 version was launched.

Dungeon Keeper as a franchise is a classic. What prompted the desire to return to it once more with Dungeons 2?

Dennis Blumenthal: As huge fans of the Dungeon Keeper titles we always wanted to do a similar game, but with our own story and ideas – and we hoped the players would like it. The feedback on Dungeons has been ambivalent. There were players who understood that Dungeons is not (and never should be) a Dungeon Keeper clone and they liked it. And there have been many players who were disappointed by the way we did it. We decided to try again and took the best things from Dungeons and tried to melt it with the best elements of the Dungeon Keeper games – and added some cool new features to expand, but not to change the original game mechanics.

Benjamin Rauscher: For me Dungeons 2 takes in a direction that is the logical consequence of the Dungeon Keeper Franchise. Thus – and this constitutes a huge part of my motivation to build Dungeons 2 – the game establishes some very important core features that Dungeon Keeper was hinting at, but didn’t (yet) implement. Most notably: a complete hand modeled overworld to conquer and “evilfy” and direct control over an army of multiple creatures that the player raised in the dungeon.

"Dungeons 2 consists of two different games and incorporates two different control paradigms: indirect gameplay in the dungeon and direct RTS-like gameplay in the overworld."

What were the goals in the sequel? What did you learn from the development of the first Dungeons game?

Dennis Blumenthal: With Dungeons we tried to give players a Dungeon Keeper themed game with some new mechanics. But after the release of Dungeons we learned, that many players don’t want fundamental changes to the traditional gameplay mechanics, so we decided to give it a new try with Dungeons 2. This time, instead of changing we tried to enhance the mechanics from the Dungeon Keeper games. So our goals for Dungeons 2 have been: Continue the story of Dungeons, add a big pinch of traditional DK mechanics and garnish it with some new features.

The original Dungeons had some interesting mechanics that are absent in the sequel. What was the reason for going back to a more traditional Dungeon Keeper-like experience?

Dennis Blumenthal: The reason for this step was our desire to give players the game they want to play. We gave them Dungeons, they gave us feedback, we gave them Dungeons 2. That’s it.

With Dungeons 2 having released last year for PC, what are your thoughts on criticism for its RTS sections and how simplistic they felt?

Dennis Blumenthal: The RTS sections should bring more diversity into the game. Exploring the overworld was a big thing for us and we discussed this a lot, how to make this happen in the best possible way. We decided that entering and conquering the overworld should have to feel different for players compared to building your dungeon under the earth and turning this part of the game into an RTS allowed us to do many cool things.

Benjamin Rauscher: Dungeons 2 consists of two different games and incorporates two different control paradigms: indirect gameplay in the dungeon and direct RTS-like gameplay in the overworld. This approach definitively has risks and will result in a game that cannot be the most cutting edge RTS game. My point is: it also shouldn’t be. The overworld is a playground, an opportunity to use those armies trained in the dungeon and bring the fight to those nasty heroes and their appallingly good world and ultimately to completely conquer this world. As such and in my opinion the overworld part is and should be simplistic by design so that a player can satisfyingly dominate the overworld with his horde of creatures. Or taken the other way round: it would be wrong to model the overworld as a strategically challenging RTS-game demanding a high amount of actions per minute of each player to conquer it and otherwise take great losses to the creatures they lovingly nurtured in the underworld.

I do not mean to say that the criticism is unfounded and we will try to address it should we ever be in a situation to develop a sequel to Dungeons 2, but the point I like to deliver in this respect is that the overworld being simplistic contributes to a great deal to the Dungeon Keeper charm and spirit we wanted to capture in the game.

"We had to change controls and user interface quite fundamentally to make it work."

Dungeons 2 sees the Ultimate Evil split into separate pieces and there’s a larger reliance on your units than before. What kinds of twists and turns can PS4 players expect?

Wouldn’t it be boring to tell this beforehand? What I can say is this: Realmforge and Kalypso have put a lot of hard work and effort into Dungeons 2 to make it a fun and entertaining experience from the beginning to the end.

With the ability to venture into the Overworld and wreck heroes’ holdings, how does this change up the traditional Dungeon Keeper formula? What other benefits does this kind of expansion hold for players?

It doesn’t change the traditional formula; it takes it – literally – to the next level. And it brings more variety into the game. Now you are not only building your dungeon and recruiting monsters who are waiting to defend you. You take your army, step up to the overworld and conquer it! And while you are fighting somewhere on the overworld, some heroes might meanwhile attack you in your dungeon, what makes the game more exciting and challenging.

Benjamin Rauscher: In addition to everything said before the overworld allows us to build much more diverse and interesting levels both in respect to visual variety (we have deserts, woods, landscapes covered in snow, etc.) as well as in terms of gameplay variety.

How difficult was it to translate the RTS and management elements of Dungeons 2 to the PlayStation 4, especially with the limited options that a controller provides?

Benjamin Rauscher: We had to change controls and user interface quite fundamentally to make it work. And having two different control paradigms in the dungeon and the overworld didn’t help in this respect. So it took us quite some time to make the game work with controllers.

But on the other hand it worked much better than we expected – bearing in mind that there aren’t that many (if any?) dungeon management games or RTS games on PS4 …

"All patches for the PC version of the game have been integrated in the PS4 version, as well. In addition to that we significantly improved the performance of the game."

What improvements have been made to the core gameplay since last year’s PC release?

Benjamin Rauscher: All patches for the PC version of the game have been integrated in the PS4 version, as well. In addition to that we significantly improved the performance of the game. But we didn’t change any core gameplay features that hadn’t been touched by previous PC patches just for the console.

So Dungeons 2 plays exactly the same on PS4 compared to the latest PC version. Apart from having different controls and user interface, of course.

Will there be any new multiplayer modes with the PS4 release?

Dennis Blumenthal: There are no new multiplayer modes, no – but: With the PS4 version players get not only Dungeons 2, they get also the DLCs “Pixieville”, “Morningwood”, “A Chance of Dragons”, “A Song of Sand and Fire” and “A Clash of Pumpkins”. This brings new maps, new opponents and over 30 hours of additional gametime.

Was there a specific reason why you are only bringing this to one console (PS4) and not on the Xbox One?

Dennis Blumenthal: We love both of these great consoles and would have loved to see Dungeons 2 on Xbox One, but as our human and technical resources are limited, we wanted to focus on one console first to deliver the best possible experience for players. The decision whether to develop for Xbox One or for PS4 was a tough one, but as the PS4 is the more successful at this moment we chose the PS4.

Will the PS4 version run at 1080p and 60fps?

Dennis Blumenthal: 1080p yes, constant 60fps no.

How closely will the PS4 version stack up against the PC build in terms of visuals?

Benjamin Rauscher: Dungeons 2 is visually completely equivalent to the PC version of the game in all but one aspect: for performance reasons we had to remove grass planes in the overworld.

What does the future hold for the Dungeons franchise? Will there be a third game or something completely different but in the same genre?

Dennis Blumenthal: I could tell you, but then I would get fired. And I don’t like getting fired. Sorry.

Thanks for your time. Is there anything else you want to tell us before we let you go?

Dennis Blumenthal: Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams.

Realmforge Studios’ strategy and simulation game Dungeons 2 will be launching on the PlayStation 4 next month. However at this point the developers have no plans to launch an Xbox One build of the game. GamingBolt recently caught up with Dennis Blumenthal, Product Manager at Kalypso Media and Benjamin Rauscher, Head of Studio at Realmforge Studios and asked them whether there is any specific reason behind the lack of an Xbox One version.

“We love both of these great consoles and would have loved to see Dungeons 2 on Xbox One, but as our human and technical resources are limited, we wanted to focus on one console first to deliver the best possible experience for players. The decision to develop for Xbox One or for PS4 was a tough one, but as the PS4 is the more successful [console] at this moment, we chose the PS4,” Dennis said to GamingBolt.

Given that Microsoft has reportedly sold around 20 million units compared to the PlayStation 4 which is probably close to 40 million by now, the decision taken by Kalypso Media seems to make sense. After all, developers and publishers want to play it safe and launch only on a platform that is selling well in the market. However this does not mean that the game will never launch on the Xbox One as the developers may start working on it if they have enough free resources and also, whether it will be able to garner higher sales figure.

Perhaps the developers just bit off more than they could chew, deciding to combine a fundamental dungeon manager that calls back to the good old days of that genre, with a real-time strategy mode game. It would seem, and I’d imagine the creators believed that the combination of the two modes would make a compelling game. Instead the shortfalls of both modes takes away from the overall enjoyment and made me wonder why they didn’t just try and perfect one or the other.

"To be fair, there were also some things I really liked about the way Dungeons 2 is laid out, but in the end there wasn’t enough to make me fall in love or even lust with the title as a whole."

The story of Dungeons 2 revolves around playing as the Ultimate Evil (and his hand). I had to first build up my dungeon as that disembodied hand and this part of the game is actually pretty fun. I had to first order a few of the lowliest of my lowly minions, known as “Snots” to start clearing away walls and rubble and building me rooms. I also needed to get a few of them to start mining gold.

This mode also introduces something that seems to be new to dungeon management games as a whole in which I could actually tell my Snots they needed to work faster by slapping them. Whether or not this really serves a purpose, other than eliciting a chuckle seems unclear. The game has a number of jokes running throughout, including a voiceover by a narrator who basically serves as an extended tutorial, mapping out what I was supposed to do the deeper I got into the title. Several times, this narrator breaks the third wall in a way that is genuinely funny and could be pointed to as one of the best features of Dungeons 2.

Eventually I’m able to “recruit” additional units to my cause, with the first armed forces being Orcs. This is also where the game seems to start to go off the rails, because it’s never quite clear what the rules are for recruiting additional minions. There is a number that serves as the max number of units I could have, but there isn’t any sort of easy to determine cost for creating. Once I “made” an Orc, the label for this unit becomes shaded for a while in what appears to be a waiting period, but once that waiting period ends, there still isn’t a tried and true way to create another unit right away.

"The dragging and dropping also causes a bit of a problem because when I dropped an Orc right next to an enemy, the Orc was dazed for a bit and always suffered from a preemptive attack."

It would have been nice if the narrator would cover this topic if I tried to create another Orc too soon. While most of the battle takes place outside the dungeon, there are a couple of fights right there in that first level, including against a number of spiders as well as their queen. While picking up and dragging a unit into the fray is sort of a neat feature, it’s also pretty annoying considering there seems to be almost no AI involved. Despite the fact that the narrator noted enemies forces were marching on my dungeon, my army seemed completely oblivious.

The dragging and dropping also causes a bit of a problem because when I dropped an Orc right next to an enemy, the Orc was dazed for a bit and always suffered from a preemptive attack. Being unable to select more than one unit at a time, and then having to drag them to the fight also made the fight drag out entirely too long. If there was a better way to do this, it wasn’t remotely evident. This was also a problem I noted in my preview of the game and it’s a shame that wasn’t fixed.

Eventually and too long after it begins, the fight against the spiders is over and I was able to begin the second part of Dungeons 2’s gameplay. This is the RTS side and always takes place outside the dungeons. The combat here is easier to command, because I could actually select all of my units and point them to where they needed to go instead of having to drag them around.

"There is a cartoonish approach to Dungeons 2 which makes the game look pretty. The lighting and shading in the dungeons are impressive as well. Building dungeons is also quite fun, especially when building rooms like the brewery."

The complete lack of any real combat AI sticks out here even more, unfortunately. While the pointing and clicking is easier, if I happen to point and click at a point that is beyond where the enemy is located, my forces don’t stop and fight. Instead they wander by the enemy and wait for new orders. It’s fortunate the enemy does the same, but this is a feature I had assumed was ironed out years ago. Still having to say “no, idiots, there’s who you’re supposed to fight, stop waking past them,” in an RTS game in 2015 was disappointing to say the least.

I’ll stop here and note that I’ve been almost entirely negative about Dungeons 2 so far, but there are positives in the game. The look of the game is actually quite good and while the characters are ones you’ve seen before, they have a nice look and feel. There is a cartoonish approach to Dungeons 2 which makes the game look pretty. The lighting and shading in the dungeons are impressive as well. Building dungeons is also quite fun, especially when building rooms like the brewery (which is needed for the orcs.) It’s also fun to have Snots take out entire walls of the dungeon in order to expand my domain.

The problem is that there just isn’t enough here. The combat is not only frustrating but it’s nothing that hasn’t been seen a ton of different times. The problem is that the game attempted to bring something new by combining two features into one package and both came out pretty mediocre.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Dungeons 2 is currently being developed by Realmforge Studios, a Germany based developer that was founded by Kalyspo Media as majority shareholder and who will act as publisher for the same. Realmforge has worked on Dungeons, it’s stand alone expansion and the vampire based action RPG, Dark while Kalypso Media is better known for the Tropico series. Dungeons 2 is currently set to launch on PC, Mac and Linux on April 24th and it is available for pre-order on the Steam platform.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Factions

Development

Dungeons 2 has already received a fair amount of praise in the lead up to its release as a true successor to EA’s much loved Dungeon Keeper video game but details are fairly sparse regarding its development.

Unlike most games, which are typically announced during press conferences or by way of a press release, Dungeons 2 was given a stealth announcement. Players of the critically underwhelming vampire action role playing game Dark, came across an Easter Egg in the game that served as both the official reveal and announcement of the game, despite initially being considered a joke on the part of the developers.

The Easter Egg came in the form of graffiti in a shadowed alleyway, largely being out of view. The graffiti depicts a goblin-esque character resting his hands on a skull that might be a cane. Text above and below the goblin creature reads, “Brace Yourselves Dungeons 2 Is Coming.”

Speaking about some of the new mechanics and visuals that have been implemented into the game, namely the real time strategy portion, Viktor Linke, Art Director of Dungeons 2, has said, “I think a lot of people expected the first Dungeons to be another Dungeon Keeper, and it really wasn’t. It was more like a tower defence game. So we knew we wanted to have more management for the sequel, like you have to manage your dungeon, build up your creatures, care for your creatures.”

It was this demand for a more Dungeon Keeper-esque management system in the game that led to a fundamental shift in the games art style. Linke goes on to talk about how things have been made “chunkier, bigger” and “more cartoonish”.

The game also made an appearance at GamesCom 2014 alongside other Kalypso titles like Crookz, Crowntakers and Grand Ages Medieval. It was announced to include “2 playable factions, 26 unique creatures, multiple types of heroes and game modes”.

Although information is scarce, the game will support multiplayer for up to four players and stretch across four game modes.

While avoiding giving details about the gameplay modes on offer, Christian Wolfertstetter, Creative Director at Realmforge Studios,  has said, “The missions have very different objectives. One time there’s another Dungeon Lord to destroy, another time you will have to collect a special artifact, protect creatures traveling through your dungeon, kill heroes roaming through your dungeon, pervert heroes to join your side or just survive waves after waves of heroes.”

Plans are also underway to make sure the level editor sees a release to the public for use in-game. “We use an in-house level editor to create these missions and we’re planning to make this tool public after the release of the game,” according to Wolfertstetter.

Story

The Dungeon Lord, also known as the Dark Lord, is back on a quest of vengeance that will see him recruiting all manner of creatures from every part of the world. Not content with his domain in the underworld, he is setting his sights on the overworld of the human realm.

Gameplay

Gameplay remains largely unchanged from the original Dungeons game which means the player will be charged with the upkeep and maintenance of Heroes and not the minions that so populate the halls of your dungeons. This is what makes the game so different from Dungeon Keeper.

Perhaps the biggest change in Dungeons 2 is the inclusion of the “Hand of Terror”. This hand of influence gives you control of your units and enables you to give them commands that will let you attack your foes with directly. It’s this new inclusion in the game that has seen it receive the real time strategy classification.

The game offers two gameplay aspects, one of which is a Dungeon Manager Sim in the classical sense and the other mode is set in the outside world in the realm of humans which introduces players to real time strategy.

The game is said to sport a “thrilling single player campaign” that contains two playable factions.

Factions

At this time, only two Factions have been announced. One faction is the Combative Horde, with the other yet to be named.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.

Dungeons 2 allows me to do this in a number of ways and while the game isn’t completely finished, what I got to see and play of the title seems to be one that I will certainly continue to play when everything it has to offer is indeed rolled out. That rollout isn’t too far away, which also had me quite excited because I honestly want to see what the full game has to offer compared to what the developer says is admittedly a held back version of Dungeons 2.

"Another way Dungeons 2 wants to stand out from the pack of games quite a bit like this is that it wants to bring quite a bit of humor to the title."

The game opens up by letting me take the role of the “Ultimate Evil” as I lay waste to a number of encampments of Alliance troops before eventually taking out their main castle. This is basically an introduction to one half of the gameplay that Dungeons 2 has to offer. Known as the “Overworld”, this is the kind of sim game type where you have to give orders to your troops and make sure you move them out of harms way before they drop dead.

There isn’t much danger of that as the Ultimate Evil, at least not that I saw. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since this is basically the introduction of the game and its initial controls. After getting through that particular level, the real meat of the game begins as I was transported to a dungeon that had very rudimentary construction and minions to control with a disembodied hand.

Another way Dungeons 2 wants to stand out from the pack of games quite a bit like this is that it wants to bring quite a bit of humor to the title. The voice over and text throughout the game is there to tell you how to get through one small mission after another, but it attempts to do so in a rather funny way. Sometimes the dialogue will be straightforward and other times the “narrator” will meander off on a tangent, having to snap himself back into the action that is being carried out on screen. The humor is sort of hit or miss. I laughed out loud at some of pop culture references but other times, I just sighed and wished the developers weren’t trying quite so hard.

"One annoying aspect of Dungeons 2 is that no matter what the personalities, they aren’t very smart. This doesn’t appear to be a “Orcs are dumb so your army is dumb” rather this appears to be a problem with the artificial intelligence in the game."

The art style of Dungeons 2 is pretty impressive and you are zoomed in enough to tell when you are selecting one of several different kinds of minions who you need to set to specific jobs. One annoying aspect of Dungeons 2 is that no matter what the personalities, they aren’t very smart. This doesn’t appear to be a “Orcs are dumb so your army is dumb” rather this appears to be a problem with the artificial intelligence in the game.

When enemies come into your dungeon, whether they are Alliance troops or other dungeon dwelling creatures, your forces aren’t going to respond automatically. At least they didn’t for me in this particular build of the game. In order to get troops to the battlefront, I had to use my disembodied hand to pick them up and move them right to where the enemy was situated. Even if a soldier seemed like he should have been in eyeshot of the enemy, they wouldn’t go and attack every time. This becomes a real problem when talking about a management game, especially when non-combatants also won’t move out of the line of fire automatically.

This particular feature might have been the single most annoying part of the entire game. If the developer isn’t able to address what appears to be a rather obvious problem with the A.I. then the game is going to be tiresome, especially as the game offers up more difficult enemies farther into the game.

"When all is said and done, the game offers enough fun and interesting aspects that I want to play more. This is a game I was able to lose an hour in pretty easily and not feel as though I was playing in circles."

When talking about the Overworld, there is less of a problem of your forces needing to recognize the enemy, since you are on the march already. Still I noticed an issue that plagues a lot of these types of games, where once I had defeated one assigned enemy, my forces would kind of mill around. Since this isn’t a problem that is limited to Dungeons 2, it’s probably not a problem I should expect to get fixed once the game is finished.

When all is said and done, the game offers enough fun and interesting aspects that I want to play more. This is a game I was able to lose an hour in pretty easily and not feel as though I was playing in circles. Being able to recruit new kinds of troops by journeying out of my dungeon was an interesting twist on this kind of game. Making my dungeon bigger and more efficient for my evil army was also quite a bit of fun.

If there’s another thing I’d love to see it would be a wide variety of rooms that can actually be built, but there was enough available that it didn’t feel needlessly repetitive. The game has a few shortfalls and it’s not going to knock anyone over with originality, but Dungeons 2 was truly a fun time and a game I’ll hopefully return to when the final build launches.

This game was previewed on the PC.

In 2011, Kapypso Media released Dungeons. The game may not have had the most innovative or original name (what’s next, a stealth game called Stealth? A racing game called Car?), but the game itself, which was a dungeon simulator/management game, in the vein of the classic Dungeon Keeper, was good enough that it sold. A lot. It was very successful. Successful enough that Kalypso Media have now gone ahead and announced a sequel for it.

With a name that is somehow even less imaginative than Dungeons (I mean, you just plopped on a ‘2’ at the end, really? Not even a subtitle?), the game is currently being developed by Realmforge Studios, and has a projected release date of 2015. And… that’s really all we know about it. What platforms will this game be coming on, for instance? Well, as of right now, it has been announced for PC and Mac. Will they put it on smartphones and tablets? Heck, I don’t know but, judging by how badly Dungeon Keeper had to be butchered before it was put on mobiles, I hope to goodness this stays away from iOS or Android.