Overly complicated fun
So, It was with great expectations I found this game, which is often described as a Dungeon Keeper remake, and old school classic!
The game puts you in a position of an imp who has been summoned to do evil deeds by a megalomaniac. Your job is to build a dungeon, loot treasures and defend your murky kingdom from the occasional party of heroes.
It is a rather original concept, and I suppose it cover several genres, including RPG, RTS and Tower Defense. The whole evil perspective is a fun twist, however the game is never truly dark, it is more a kind of Monty Python kind of "evil" story, and the campaign story does have many moments where you will LOL a bit from your masters awkward steps to become an evil overlord. Let's just say things does not always go as planned.
The game has a bit of a learning curve. Not because it is complex to play, but the user interface is not elegant. It often feels illogical and clumsy, and before you are taught how to do something, you might not be able to intuitively guess how to do it. You also often need to micromanage every single unit.
For example, if you want to upgrade the weapon of your imps, you have to manually click each one to see if it can be updated, then click on the appropriate upgrade buttons. And if you want imps to follow you, they need to be instructed to do so one by one. And if you die and respawn, they forget their orders. It would be much better to be able to select a bunch and then give them one order.
You might also find it can be hard to do somethings that should be easy. For example, you can cast spells on enemies, but if your minions are currently attacking them, it can be hard to get a lock on thee enemies through the crowd of friendlies. Which is annoying, since you would normally only want to cast spells in a fight. Your minions also get stuck on their way, and unless you ask them to explicitly teleport one by one, they will walk the long way to their target.
Apart from all the user interface related annoyances, the game is very entertaining, and has lots of well thought out features which will let you experiment and tinker for quite a long time. It will take a while to get through the campaign, then you have multiplayer (which I did not try so far). It would be an easy 8.0 or even 8.5 if not for the cumbersome interface.