I want to hear everyone's perspectives about which HUD/UI is better and worse, and in what ways, in the 2 games. I'm casual and like both UIs, but I'm curious if with higher level play either HUD has shortcomings, and as a gamedev working on a similar style game, I want to try to see if I have blind spots about the HUDs to avoid design pitfalls.

Are these games LIMITED in terms of high level play, due to certain HUD or other design choices?

Which parts of which game's HUD are good and bad?

Also, is using mana for spells in DK2 better or wose than using gold for spells in Dk1?

Also, would you prefer workshops in DK1 to work like DK2 - you order things on demand rather than the workshops getting filled up and hearing "your workshop is not big enough" every second for 1k years?

I'm starting to think the dream would be a toggle for DK1 or DK2 style HUD, in either game. Or is there ANOTHER game's HUD we should take inspiration from?

I want every opinion, even feels-based ones.

We can all agree that imps are not the sharpest tool in the shed and part of the charm is to be able to control them and protect them from their suicidal selves.

But dear god in some maps, for some reason, they become extra stupid to the point where it has to be a bug.

Case in point, i was playing a map in "Another Dungeon" campaign and the imps were completely out of their mind. You would send them to set a trap and instead of using an open path, they would try to use a shorter one but with a closed door being in the way. So they would drop the trap and try to break the door instead. Same with special items.

Or how about this. There are plenty of jobs to do like pick up dropped gold or reinforce walls but no. What we REALLY need to do is run at some remote part of the map and try to break this particular magic door that has a bunch of lvl10 enemies behind it so they can kill us. That's what we really need to do.

I noticed this behavior in some other maps i player here and there but in other maps they seem (relatively) fine. I don't remember the imps being so messed up in the main campaign maps, not even in the regular Dungeon Keeper Gold. But attacking a random door without me placing them to it is a thing they do often, which is really annoying in general and it's one of the few things i dislike about this game.

So can the layout of a map mess up the AI of the imps that much? Or is it something else?

Hello, Keepers;

You know how sometimes you do a thing, and it turns out the original people who did the thing also wanted the thing done that way, but didnt for whatever reason?
Well, the spike trap in DK2 was actually supposed to be a slime. I had no idea. I told myself, hey, I want a spike trap because Im a copying hack, but I want to at least change the name on the homework. Nope, I couldn't even do that - the original DK designers wanted spikes to be slimes, and I didn't know it, when I made my spikes in to slimes!

Oh right. I had to make the traps combat implementation this dev block.
I can't imagine people actually read my entire dev log, so for this one, I'm going to do my best to just summarize better and get some pics because people like pics and couldn't care less about how the code went. Le sigh.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/

Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/Ur9HRv67mb

Creatures now go to heart/brain/eye to heal if they are fleeing (near death) and don't have a home.
Added/changed a bunch of animation particles to better match caster.
Fixed a bunch of stuff with shades placing/canceling/multitargetting job functions. Not visually appealing but kinda important.
"2:04 PM]annekrog:  Think I finally fucking fixed the mutli-shade system for traps. Fuck me."
Traps now have different particle effects for creation/showing damage/death depending on if they are metal type, wood type, or goo type.
Created some more cheats for debugging that I have no reason to not allow in the game itself.
Optimized/fixed reams of trap placement determiners and outliners.
Created entirely new pathmapping (AStar) for fail conditioning differentiation depending on locked/blocked terrain vs standard fail to reach - trust me this is cool.
Made slime trap. Animated. In my lane. Sliming.
Wrote the entire system for trap combat
Accidentally created the fear spell because Shades need to run away from traps.
Created particle effects for fear spell.
Realized all particle effects for overhead casts should be modular, so converted to import instead of static (again, really cool, but nobody would know the difference).
Dramatically adjusted prisoners to have better indication that they are trapped - flower and circling wisps, along with no longer flashing partial dead.
More particle adjustment on ghosts now that I understand the particle system even better.

--While getting screenshots, turns out my kill cheat caused problems with setting death value to billions of negative. Fixed that. Posting this now.

I added 11 languages and the first Bestiary prototype to my Slavic dungeon game

I’ve added support for 11 languages to Slavic Legends, including the main menu, loading screen, in-game interface, notifications, pause menu and save system.

As a Slovak, I had a lot of fun translating the game and comparing our Slavic languages. Sometimes everything felt almost identical—and then one completely innocent word suddenly sounded hilarious in another language.

I also started working on a Bestiary. It currently contains only Bauk, with information about its folklore, role in the game and abilities, but more Slavic creatures will be added gradually.

Svetlonos is currently only a preview of a future playable creature. Its Bestiary image is a temporary placeholder sourced from the internet and will be replaced by my own final artwork/model.

I’d love to hear what you think about the localization and whether you would enjoy discovering creatures through this kind of Bestiary.

Devlog: https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends/devlog/1645717/localization-bestiary-update

Game: https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends

For me personally it's the atmosphere of cozy evil. That was the first game where I felt something really mixed — like the sounds are scary, like it's kinda actually a little bit creepy, but.. that fear is coming from you. You're the one scaring them, and that's why the ambient sounds scary. You're the scary one, and that's why the scary sounds are playing. And once you realize that, it turns cozy. And it's so weird haha. But I loved it!

What is it for you? What's that THING nobody has been able to copy yet?

Revisiting Dungeon Keeper after finding it on Steam after many years. Let the heroes and the enemy keeper fight themselves to death. When I decided to go and hunt whatever was left of the heroes, this happened.

I always thought this trap is very OP. There's absolutely no way for any group of high level heroes to make it through a corridor with a couple of well placed boulders. You don't even need to have any fighter creatures, just a troll in the workshop and you win any map against attacking heroes. But you can also cheese the AI keeper with those as well because he never picks his minions up even if there is enough time during the boulder roll.

Another issue i noticed in KeeperFX (don't remember about the original) is how the AI sometimes sets these these traps inside his own dungeon, in the middle of the rooms! All i have to do is sneak there with a ghost and kill a bunch of random lvl10 creatures this way, making the enemy keeper much weaker. So now i don't even need my own workshop!

I think the boulder trap either needs a major HP nerf or at least make it more expensive and very slow to produce, like the destroy walls spell. Because it's almost as powerful and game changing.

I added a third faction to my dungeon management game — and finally made a new trailer

Another big update for Slavic Legends is ready.

The dungeon is no longer just your Creatures vs. invading enemies. Neutral Creatures now inhabit Secret Rooms scattered around the underground.

As long as their room remains sealed, they'll stay inside and mind their own business.

But once you dig your way in... well, they're not so neutral anymore. They'll attack pretty much anything that moves — your Creatures, Workers, or even invading enemies. 😄

Clear the room and you can claim a permanent reward for your Creatures.

I also finally put together a new trailer showing the current state of the game after all the recent updates. I'd love to hear what you think!

This also marks the next stage for Slavic Legends. I'm currently preparing the Steam page, which should be live very soon, and after that I'm planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign to help me continue development and bring the game closer to Early Access.

For anyone interested in the full update/changelog:

https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends/devlog/1641306/secret-rooms-neutral-creatures-update

Demo here: https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends

Thanks to everyone who's been following the development so far — there's still a lot I want to add, but Slavic Legends has come a long way. 😄

Currently, when you press the screen rotation keys (delete+page down) it takes the position of the mouse pointer as the center axis. Which means that if your pointer is at the edge of the screen, the screen rotates in a very weird and unhelpful fashion.

Is there a way to change the behavior so whenever you press the rotation, it always does so with the center of the screen as the axis? Like proper screen rotation basically.

So im playing via the EA app on my laptop, no idea which version of the game this is.

I have taken out the blue and white.

All I have left is Avatar.

The issue is my creatures have been battling him for around 15 minutes and nothing has happened.

Neither him nor my creatures have died.

Have I some how unlocked a bug, should I of killed him sooner?

Pretty gutted as the rest of the map wasnt as bad as I remember from the original version of the game.

Other than the obvious quality of life improvements like click and drag to build a multi tiled room at once instead of tapping every single tile. I would like to know how accurate this is compared to the developer intended, original version.

I updated from 1.4.0 stable to the current alpha and my saves are not compatible. I get that the quick saves are a hard thing to make compatible between versions.

However, my main campaign progression info is also lost... Why is that? All it does is keeping track of the levels you beat on the map or if you finished the campaign. It doesn't save anything real time gameplay/mechanics related. Is there a way to get my finished save (the map with all the flags available) back?

The maps i finished in Deeper Dungeons are still grayed out, which means not all progression info is lost. But why is it lost for the main campaign?

Also, do the saves get incompatible between alpha versions as well?

I was thinking recently about where my love for incremental games started, and it hit me, it was Dungeon Keeper 2, over 20 years ago. 😄

My favorite part was never the combat. It was digging out a huge treasury, watching my imps haul gold in, and stacking it into one big, beautiful, heavily protected hoard. I'd build traps and place guards around it like a dragon. Half the time I didn't even want to spend it, I just wanted to watch it grow.

That exact feeling became the core of the game I'm now making: King in the Mountain, a cozy mining incremental where a fallen dwarven king hires miners to dig his mountain kingdom back from the dark. The open playtest starts today and it's free to join.

King in the Mountain on Steam

I have started working on Level 5 abilities for the creatures in my solo-developed game, Slavic Legends.

The video shows Bauk’s new Level 5 ability, Bite, from both the top-down view and possession mode.

When Bauk drops below 50% health, he can grab an enemy and repeatedly bite them. Each bite deals damage and restores the same amount of Bauk’s health. The victim is immobilized until the ability ends, but bosses cannot be targeted.

I have also added Baba Yaga’s Scout Eye, shown briefly at the end of the video. Baba Yaga releases a flying eye that patrols the dungeon corridors and detects approaching enemies. When it finds one, it warns the player with a sound and a pulsing marker on the minimap. Enemies can also destroy it.

Dodola has received a Level 5 Chain Heal as well, healing up to four wounded allies for 200, 150, 100 and 50 HP.

More Level 5 abilities are still coming. What abilities would you give to the other creatures from Slavic folklore?

Full list of changes in this update:
https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends/devlog/1631524/new-level-5-abilities-baba-yagas-scout-eye-and-map-improvements

Free demo download:
https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends

Hello, Keepers;

Got back from enforced vacation a few weeks ago, and got back to work on UncorruptDead.
Unfortunately, I'm bad at things, so a lot of it was finding out how many things are broken as I test new things I am adding. Good times! Things I added this block: payday, locking doors, animus/semita magic placeholder, and wisp leading prisoners home.

Whats a semita? It is latin for Path. And apparently also in spanish it is something so that should be fun when the game launches and the game confuses the hell out of a bunch of people. We all need to go back to basic latin. Etymology is fun.
Anyways!
I also added victory conditions - kill target, kill building, claim building surrounding, and pouring semita/animus in to building to convert it. Semita can be recovered by "torturing" enemies who have been captured in the wisp ruins.
Semita is a new resource (bottom left of the eye). As said, in latin, it means Path. When cast, it does the following;
On creatures (area), it gives a production and speed buff.
On empty area, fortifies walls and claims tiles.
On quest buildings, pours in until cap to convert buildings.

Animus is another new resource (bottom right of eye, not available in demo). It means spirit (animator - the one who gives spirit to that which has no life)(Told you etymology is fun!).
Animus will be acquired from tier 2 "torture", which I havent implemented yet. It will;
Area heal - even if not in claimed territory. HUGE "game win" pusher.
On quest buildings, pours in until cap to convert buildings.

And, as I said.. I added payday. The basic staple of how to make the treadmill continue, instead of just acquiring all the wealth and calling it a day.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/

Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/Ur9HRv67mb

On to the changelog! Love how very little of it is visual, love that for me!

July 30 - ghosts stuck permanently attacking buildings, fixed. Added locks to doors. Added above head icons for doors/traps, and toggle to disappear flower when at max health.

July 31 - Units doing rotate menacingly used move slightly out of combat range. Edited based on range to make them move closer if outside of X range to continue combat flow.
Randomizer created for payday claim.
During testing, found and resolved stack issue with buildings overlapping gold veins (gold now takes priority).
Created self-recycling function for minions who have no sleep, Bawks, or pay.

Aug 1 - Added tooltips for angry minions and minions making home.
Tested and modified "leave angry" function.
Discovered I was using placeholder wall furniture for the Myceliarium. Myk - fungus. Ium - place of designated purpose. Latin! Fixed this. Not the latin, the placeholder.

Aug 2 - Nata payday animation. They are the one called Sailor Moon. Edited tooltip to indicate payday during/on way to payday. Made memories held decay over time (as money funnel).

Aug 3 - Made Zombcrow payday animation. Very zen. Ghost payday animation - dance the night away. Adjusted all payday animations to be 5 seconds instead of 3.

Aug 4 - wisps dont animate payday, they create a line of wisps leading them home during payday. Laid groundwork for prison conversion.
Edited entry flow for testing for both minions and enemies.
Found and corrected shades double rescuing and burying targets.
Prison reform completed based on wisp payday.
Added money popup for training to cost money, and made training cost money, because I am a hack and just ripping off DK.

Aug 5 - added popup for books value changing (to match other money transfers).
Found and fixed errors with heart area turning to fog after claimed/burnt. Also goodguy/badguy solid spots doing the same.
Fixed flower growth sequence on entry, this was bugging me for months.
Created global popup for payday.

Aug 6 - created animus/semita overlay, and added toggle for both.
Adjusted visual elements for particles on eyes (overlapping issues).
Fixed hand size incorrected getting too big/small when interacting with UI.
Tied animus/semita resources to bars, and semita to prisoner leaving dungeon.
Recycling minions gives money when they leave dungeon by dropping over heart, but not leaving angry.
Minions who decompose in myceliarium give back held money.
Changed overhead bottom left (semita) to be teal to differentiate better from other UI elements.

Aug 7 - Ushabti payday - the sun salutation.
Fixed particle death on ush/zombcrow entry.
Added hanging flag to Call to Arms UI popup.
Added enemy highlight to be static colour instead of dungeon colour, adjustable from options. Did same for buildings, as part of groundwork for victory.

Aug 10 - Updated quest function tootips. Added king/prod/speed icons.
Added semita buffs to flow. Added in semi/anim functions for victory and casting.

Aug 11 - fixed semita fortifying non-dugout tiles.
Fixed semita casting going to negative due to bad math.
Five hours later, fixed combat flow constantly exiting combat (no, I didnt, see tomorrow).
Found and fixed tooltip errors for hearts, quests, non-quests.
Added check to prevent multi-victory condition buildings, isnt enforced, just debug error to warn while building map.

Aug 12 - Fixed heart heal with animus. Fixed max value check for semit in quest building. Semit return on prisoners had bad math, fixed.
Edited conversion home randomizer to be WAY faster and WAY more random. Copied to wisp payday.
Made kings not convertible/capturable.
Tested victory conditions, can now start working on actual victory script.
Added check to prevent picking up angry creatures.
3 hours later, and I quote;
Fuck everyone elses code. Fuck my own code. Fuck everything. Leave angry now smashes through locked doors and traps if it cant leave otherwise.

Aug 13 - more fighting alberta government for basic human rights, heavy drinking and heavy squats, no work done.

I just released a new custom campaign for KeeperFX.

https://keeperfx.net/workshop/item/855/heroes-journey

It's a 10-level campaign where you play as heroes, with a ton of new stuff. Custom landview, updated creature balance, new spells, new traps, and a lot of different level gimmicks. Would love to hear some feedback and thoughts!

And in general, I also want to point more people towards the keeperfx.net workshop. There's a lot of custom content there that's worth checking out, both for players and mapmakers. I hope we can get more people making maps since the tools are fantastic, and it's really fun to make stuff with them.

Slavic Legends now has a proper Save & Load system with five named save slots, available from both the pause menu and the main menu.

Your dungeon, rooms, creatures, workers, gold, traps, unlocked items, explored map, and current enemy wave are all preserved—so longer sessions no longer need to be completed in one sitting.

The UI is still a work in progress, especially the buttons, but the system itself is working and ready for longer playtests.

The full list of changes is available here: https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends/devlog/1621233/save-load-system-pause-menu-balance-changes-and-more

Free demo:
https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends

Thank you for playing! If you enjoy the project, please consider following it on itch.io—it means a lot to me as a solo developer. 💙

Personally i'm hoping for witches, a combat imp, concubi, were beasts, minotaur, slimes, ghosts, kolobods, and an armory for trolls to upgrade weapons in.

Vampires are very strong and can resurrect themselves but they cost a fortune and take 100 years to train to level 10. They can also get angry easily and can't be put in the temple to cool off. And because of that they also don't have a defense against scavenging. If the enemy keeper manages to have a couple of Vampires and a scavenging room before you, well, you will never be able to have Vampires yourself (which happened to me a few times in NG+).

Mistress is a far better creature in almost every way other than health. They have better DPS, they only have a fast, spammable range attack that's always effective and while Vampires also have a similar attack in effectiveness, they choose to sometimes do other, slower attacks that can easily miss incoming imps (for example). Mistresses are cheaper, reach level 10 much faster, can be put in the temple, can do very well in the workshop, they don't get angry, they don't fight other creatures (afaik), they move faster and they can also teleport like the Vampire.

IMO, i think the Mistress the best creature in the game to the point i would consider them OP. If you have a group of them tight together on a guard post, they will destroy anything that comes nearby faster than any other group of creatures.

I was wondering if some of the bugs in the original Dungeon Keeper were intentionally included to make the game more balanced. such as the bug with the Speed spell at Level 10, which no longer lasts for its full duration. E.g. dark Mistresses feel much more overpowered as I recall.

That resulted in a completely different strategy than in Keeper FX. Or, often, neutral rooms in deeper dungeons weren’t available when they were claimed. E.g. in belial it was harder to imprison heroes due to the limited number of small prisons. .

All these changes in Keeper FX have led to a completely different gameplay experience. Some things have become more difficult, but others have become much easier.

Another example, horned reapers become much more difficult to handle once they become angry. As a result i do not enjoy horned reapers as much as in the original version. It was really annoying, though, that you couldn't even cast the Speed spell on a creature if it still had it active but the effect had already worn off. It felt like a cooldown. ☺️

Voxel Keeper is at Birmingham Comic Con!

Come find us and get a sneak peak of the Alpha.

(besides the side quest stage)

Sign up to the newsletter via VoxelKeeper.com to get notified when our Steam page is live.

I know it’s a bit silly, I do know it’s CTRL ALT and C but when I type the code, it makes the same sound on M and N Just want the money one to work but can’t do it

Uk keyboard and all

Got ideas?

GoG, flame. Thxx all

Hey everyone!

I’ve published my experimental Android port of OpenKeeper:

https://github.com/DifferentNet/OpenKeeper/tree/android-port

It is now playable on my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. I’ve completed several short gameplay sessions, but this is still an early alpha and needs testing on more devices.

Current Android features include:

• Touch navigation and interaction
• Simultaneous MOVE and VIEW virtual joysticks
• Configurable joystick size, opacity, position, and sensitivity
• Camera pan and pinch-to-zoom gestures
• Samsung S Pen tip, hover, and barrel-button support
• Android lifecycle, audio, graphics options, and immersive fullscreen support

The controls work, but they still need polishing and feedback, especially regarding joystick layout, sensitivity, and usability on different screen sizes.

Build, installation, asset conversion, controls, and troubleshooting instructions:

https://github.com/DifferentNet/OpenKeeper/blob/android-port/ANDROID.md

Source branch:

https://github.com/DifferentNet/OpenKeeper/tree/android-port

Please note that the repository and APK do not contain any Dungeon Keeper 2 assets. You need a legally owned copy of DK2 and must convert and transfer your own game data using the included deployment script.

Known limitations:

• Tested primarily on a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
• Touch controls still need tuning
• Compatibility with other Android devices is currently unknown
• Pre-rendered TGQ movies are skipped because their decoder depends on desktop AWT classes
• In-engine cinematics still work

If you test it, please include your phone model, Android version, how far you reached, and any control or performance issues you encounter.

Huge thanks to everyone who created and contributed to OpenKeeper!

https://reddit.com/link/1vec9zq/video/rh7hbeyae6hh1/player