Dungeon Overlord

Dungeon Overlord - launched Jan. 6!

The game I referred to in my last post is now out in the wild, ready to sate your evil dungeon keeper appetites. Titled "Dungeon Overlord", I would describe it as a mix of Dungeon Keeper / Evil Genius and PvP games such as Travian and Ikariam. DO's game designer would probably describe it much better, but that is his job after all. You can always go play it on facebook right now and correct my description!

Playing the game, you'll see that, alas, the game is flash based - easily detectable by the sound of your fans kicking on as flash hungrily sucks your cpu dry. While I would have loved to see DO done in Ardor3D, Night Owl is flash heavy and the game is not 3D anyhow. That said, I definitely have to give the client programmers props for squeezing a level of performance and capability out of flash I have rarely seen. Maybe I can convince them to do a 3D sequel... :P

Ardor Lab's (and thus my) role in this endeavor has been implementing much of the server side of the game and as such, it has been admittedly nerve-racking watching it go live. The game was tested well by Sony's (the publisher) QA staff, but the few thousand Facebook users that have started playing since the launch Thursday night have, of course, already uncovered new issues. I'm glad we are taking this slow (only word of mouth advertising), giving us some extra time to incorporate the feedback of these early dungeon overlords before the hordes descend.