Every mid-aged player remembers series of “Dungeon Keeper”, developed by Electronic Arts – it was one of the best strategy games in these times, played by lots of players around the world.

Game developers are tend to take “old proven games” back to life, usually – to mobile platforms, and probably this is what EA Games was thinking of. Logics behind is quite clear – people, who liked original series, probably are still game-addicted, have richer wallets and may jump into new redeveloped game with joy. Also, it may compete with lots of similar games currently at the market, just because of known brand and game name. However, they made couple of big mistakes.

Overall gameplay

It is quite hard to judge this game by comparing it to original series. Game still has it’s own “dungeon”, “imps” (workers), as well as digging feature – but that’s pretty much it. Other features and functions are common for action+strategy game principles, copied from well known games like Clash of Clans. Game reviews in Google Play market are more than obvious – with lots of complains that game is nothing near by the original one.

Gameplay, while adopted to mobile-friendly actions, is still quite difficult to manage. You will end up to clicking on wrong spots by accident, and multi-purpuse buttons on specific elements (like rooms) will get you nervous.

Animations are quite good, but barely visible because of dark environment. Game uses real 3D engine – which is great – however, it will drain your phone battery quite fast; even with Samsung Galaxy S4 big capacity battery, it may deplete within an hour of gameplay.

Also, game has lots of annoying phone notices comming out – and there is no way to limit them.

We rank Overall gameplay as 5 out of 10.

Freemium Eligibility criteria

Game is near by to Freemium – while it follows it’s principles, it’s practically impossible to play it without spending real money. Some digging takes 24 hours to complete, so you will definately be stuck after first few days. Attacking other players doesn’t help much, as usualy your warehouses will become full after few attacks, without possibility to expand them fast enough.

You can buy virtual money and advance faster – however, prices are huge. In-game promotions are annoying, provided as banners on game load, and sometimes they even make application non-responsive (ANR).

We rank Eligibility criteria 5 out of 10.

Actual cost

First investment into “Imps” is a must. Further investments may speed things up at least to mediorce gameplay. Prices are enormous, probably targeted to rich players.

We rank Actual cost 4 our of 10.

Conclusion

Overall rating: 4.7 out of 10.
We can’t recommend this game, unless you have a big pocket full of money.

You can download this game from Google Play Store or Apple iTunes.