It’s a difficult line to walk; you want a nice and roomy dungeon, but you also want to kill all of the intrepid heroes foolish enough to fall for your marketing ploys. In a title that finds itself embracing the ability to cavort as the titular bad guy, Legend Of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Master lets you work for a relatively faceless dungeon corporation as the anti-hero boss. You’ll find yourself climbing the corporate ladder throughout the weeks and years, brutally murder heroes, develop traps, and level up everything you can get your hands on. It’s a fine balance, and the developers at Goblinz Studio have seemed to strike it.
Gameplay revolves around two loops that you’ll find yourself doing infinitely during your employ at the Dungeon Company; a management simulation where you step through weeks, with a myriad of options that are available to you every week. You can focus on training up your monsters to make them a bit stronger and more of a threat, purchase and upgrade traps, and all sorts of random events that you’ll have to decide what the best actions to take are.
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Some events may require sacrifice, others will give you rewards seemingly for just existing.
The second loop is your dungeon, wiped fresh after every raid for you to place your monsters and traps meticulously along the path the heroes will take to get to the rumored loads of gold and enchanted relics.
When a raid week arrives, you’ll be whisked away to defend a dungeon of your choosing, where you will play traps and troops in compatible rooms. You decide what units will go into which rooms, and their party formation that shares many similarities with Darkest Dungeon; you’ll want your tankiest monster in the front to take the hits, and abilities that can affect heroes long-term can synchronize well with other monsters in your dungeon.
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Once everything is set up, all the way to your character standing as the monstrous boss at the end, the party of heroes begins to make their way through your dungeon. The combat is acceptable in its current state, where you’ll need to pay attention to the heroes’ strengths and weaknesses to come out ahead; sacrifices are, of course, acceptable. If you stop the party of adventurers, you get some loot and an ‘attaboy’ from the company, then continuing your routine of bulking up your repertoire. If you fail to stop the heroes, then you have little to worry about, since you’ll be dead.
All in all, it’s a surprisingly addictive loop that shows moments of brilliance even this early in development. With perks and passive bonuses to be doled out, humorous events that you’ll need to oversee (therapy for your monsters, all of that torture can wear down their emotional health), and a steady sense of difficulty all culminate into a fantastic title. It currently sits at 87% positive of 319 reviewers, after their initial release into the Early Access program on March 19, 2020.
