War for the Overworld

War for the Overworld fixes some minor problems of the original Dungeon Keeper games, but does not innovate further when it comes to dungeon building. [March 2016]

War For The Overworld is a fixer-upper, and I wish I could lavish it with more praise, but the blemishes it’s launching with are undeniable and numerous. That said, it’s also a damn fine game with a ton of heart, one that’s done more for the good name of Dungeon Keeper than any official source has in years.

There is a lot of potential here and when it is finished, it will be absolutely essential, but as it is? It is for those who REALLY need a game like this in their life and want to show support to the developers.

It's clearly unfinished. But if you can look past the performance issues, weak AI and abundance of bugs, there is a nice Dungeon Keeper experience to be had. War for the Overworld does not add anything new to the formula, it does not even copy it to its full extent (take the useless walls, for example), but it is fun nonetheless. With further patching and some rebalancing, this could actually turn out as a great game one day.

Interesting proposition, especially for fans of the iconic Dungeon Keeper. For everyone else there's monotony and mild irritation.

Based heavily on Dungeon Keeper 2, this title with its twelve year old trappings has ignored all the innovations that have come since. [June 2015, p.62]

War for the Overworld was supposed to be the new Dungeon Keeper. They were on the right track, but the game that is available for download now is definitely not right; lots of bugs, crashes, bad AI, and many missing features make this game impossible to recommend.

Runs pretty well now. Great fun, very much the spirit of the original. I can think of things I'd like to tweak but it doesn't stop me wasting far too much time playing it. Team have added a lot of major content since the launch which has added greatly to the whole experience.

A worthy spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper, but far from perfect. While it does great in copying the original it doesn't expand much upon it. The art direction is fairly bland and generic which is a shame since DK had such iconic and fun designs for everything. The campaign is a also a bit heavy on time-based challenges which didn't feel very creative. What made this game good is what they successfully could mimic and what made it lacking was its own inability to innovate. However in the end I still felt like I was playing DK again, which is a much welcome feeling!

It's a pretty solid game this now that is has been updated and patched properly. While I couldn't quite get fully in to it and hadn't played Dunegon Keeper, it's a nice RTS which is different to the norm and worth taking a look at.

I'm not sure where all those high ratings come from because I still find this too buggy to be enjoyable. Most importantly - when your creatures are in a fight, you can't pick additional creatures that are not in a fight from your panel because the "these creatures are involved in a fight" thing simply doesn't work. Most of the time, the creatures are in the category "other". One would also think that it's pretty simple to only play a certain phrase only ONCE, not repeatedly until you finally finish a level. Finally, I find it pretty annoying how regularly you get hit by enemy waves in this game. There is barely any time to simply explore and plan one's dungeon. And sometimes not even for your creatures to get food and payment. I guess if that "creature activity" panel actually worked, you could pick creatures that are idle to fight. But... that's simply not possible. And you can't even pause to study the HUGE skill/perk/whatever tree in peace! Who the hell thought that that is a good idea?!

Good attempt to revive the series but gameplay is bad, campaign is not good and I'd say this is a let down unfortunately...such a shame really... I wanted this game to be a huge success. The guys did a good job to revive the DG series but unfortunately they did not capture the spirit. The game is not well polished and I did not enjoy the campaign at all. I am very sad to give a negative review... as Dungeon Keeper I was my first PC game.