Dungeon Keeper

As a boy, Star Wars equally enthused and annoyed me. Regardless of the inevitable Rebel triumph over the mean and wicked Empire, I couldn’t help willing a victory for Darth Vader and his minions. Stormtroopers seemed to symbolise the height of interstellar fashion, and the Emperor’s electrifying powers put the rebels’ mystical Force to shame. Surely I was not the only one to realise just how cool the Dark Side was?

Fortunately, this is Dungeon Keeper, and now you have the chance to seek revenge on all those irritating do-gooder types, albeit in the comfy depths of your medieval underground dwelling. With the help of an assortment of hideous creatures and some foul-smelling demons, it is your job to systematically pillage and plunder the peace-loving communities of the countryside above. Oh, and how enjoyable it is!
Using a top-down view that can be tinkered with to your liking, you start out with just a few scurrying imps - but don’t underestimate their seemingly feeble frames. Imps are the backbone of any self-respecting dungeon. They provide the means of constructing and maintaining your home, from mining precious gold (your primary source of income) to reinforcing dungeon walls against the marauding hordes. However, they are inclined to sleeping on the job if they can get away with it, so it’s up to you to keep them in check by dealing out a few well-targeted slaps to the backside using the mouse cursor.

The first thing to do to expand your caves is to hook up with a local portal - to the damned, of course. This is your source of creatures, but they are unlikely to make a home of your dungeon if it does not boast the latest hellfire amenities. These include sleeping nests for those oh so impish-naps, a hatchery to feed hungry goblins, and a treasure room to hoard your blood money. Progressive devastation of the above-land villages increases your room options to advance the technology of your dungeon, from creature training areas and spell libraries to jails and even torture chambers.As if the slaughter of the innocent wasn’t satisfying enough, you also have to contend with other equally disturbing keepers vying for your precious dungeon space (and green blood, possibly). Things aren’t as bad as they seem. Being a malevolent keeper yourself, you are also a veritable necromancer and have a wealth of magic spells at your disposal. The possession spell is of particular merit, allowing you the option to experience the labyrinthine corridors of your dungeon through the eyes of any creature you choose. Whether to personally wreak suffering on an advancing knight of the realm or simply gain a more direct understanding of the lives of your brethren, the possession spell provides a welcome extra dimension to the game engine.

Initial levels provide a wealth of in-game help as a spree of handy tips introduce you to the managerial aspects of your dungeon, and presentation is mostly excellent, with the option of high-resolution SVGA radically increasing the clarity of those sometimes hard-to-distinguish close-quarter battles.

So what’s lacking in this largely playable strategy? Upon taking the plunge into first-person perspective, the two-dimensionality of the sprites becomes glaringly obvious and pale in comparison with the realism of today’s first-person shooters, but DK can be forgiven for this by never setting out to compete with that genre.

Apart from this minor gripe, everything is in place and waiting for you to lead your cohorts to a sadistic reign of terror. Right, I’m off to confession.

The height of noise

There it was again. Even over the shunt of the train and the mobile phone jingles and the terminal chatter of the voice in my head, I recognised it immediately. The resonating sound was like a solid flat plane of energy pulsating in all directions at once. It even travelled through my hands because I heard it with them over my ears, although it did create a strange sort of echo.



I got off the train at the next station, and let it carry me toward the hill above the village. The trees seemed like cardboard cut-outs in the clear daylight. Everything got larger, and loomed green above me, grew and grew til I could no longer see the point where any part touched the sky. When I got to the end of the lane and turned off into the grass I realised that no, I was wrong - there was no change in the size in the landscape or the wilderness.

I had shrunk to an extensionless point.

I tried to look down at my body, but my vision seemed not to have any originating physical counterpart. Nor did it have any specific direction, yet I could see everything, as if I was focused intentionally on every minute speck of space all at once. It was the strangest thing, but it felt like this was the way it should be, in fact always was, just that I'd never paid enough attention to my own awareness to see it, laid bare, naked and dancing. I floated up the hill, but stayed motionless. There was sky. Birdsong. The breeze on my...