Goblin Keeper

Dungeon Keepre series belongs among the best the game world could offer. But no real MMO game has appeared with this theme. Or has it?

No name Dungeon this time but Goblin Keeper, it’s one of brand new browser MMO strategy games taking inspiration from the named legend. Open your dungeon for business on a lava lake and mine, dig, explore, research, train units and be evil, very evil.

All begins in one quite empty cave filled with lava, you have to begin constructing basic rooms as farm, room for sleeping, pub, mine and paths to the resources so the workers (goblins) can do their job. The whole process is nice, easy and with the low number of figures even easy to control. The beginning of the game is just about 20 guys around you and each of them has certain use. The cane needs all the rooms available, you just omit one and the whole place will become ineffective. For example without workshop you cannot create items and tools for reaching new characters.

What? New guys in the town?
So you have goblins who work all day long, explore the world around and do even more. Sorcerers work in the library to give you progress points which unlock new spells, items and possibilities. The basic fighting unit is orgs who are really great for attacking and defending. But that’s really not everything. You can find over 20 special units in the game as you play. Look forward to vampires, dark elves or even powerful Balrog. They all have special needs, food consumption and money. When they become unsatisfied, they can turn against you. Each of them has some pros and cons and is useful in different fields and in battles they can do good or bad according where you place them.

Is the game bad in something?
Yes, I really hoped it won’t have some weaknesses but after really entertaining opening and first third of the game, when you learn the rules, explore possibilities, production, upgrades and you make your base nicely functional, the whole thing just slows down. For example, you need to produce special material that cannot be mined, or some of the things can be mined only in certain caves. You can create new base there or send group of goblins to mine it and bring home. However, the number of base is limited and sending goblins takes really a lot of time. This think extremely slows everything down and you may even spend few days waiting for certain item and resource. Even paying for increasing the speed of all won’t help too much.

The outer world
So the big part of exploring are caves in your mountain but hundreds wait around you. Plus there are human villages, cities and forts. Those are the targets for your army and if the battle ends in your odd, then you can even benefit from it. The battles run automatic and you cannot do anything, only watch. There is no real strategy and both sides just find the fastest path to clash the steel or shoot. The villages are easy targets but as your hunger grows for more gold, you logically need bigger armies for bigger and better defended places. This makes the cooperation of several players and alliance necessary. Another great social part is making your friends headmen in your mines, libraries, caves to make the places run more effective.

The visual part of the game is great, animation are smooth full of colors but with no overkill. Each unit and figures are nicely made with several details.

So is it worthy of your time? The game can be tried by everyone but when you reach the phase when the building tempo slows down it’s up to you if there is will to spend time waiting and enjoy the game in the long run with the cooperation, battles, wars or you get bored and leave the game.