War for the Overworld, a Dungeon Keeper inspired game from 2015 had a huge free upgrade recently bringing some graphical improvements and performance optimizations. Nice to see a developer come back to an older title.
The game for the most part is in maintenance mode but this was something of an experiment for a member of their team, and still quite impressive to just come out with years later. One of the major additions is the inclusion of real-time shadows, which dramatically improves the moody look of the game.
A few other shadow tweaks were added in, all of which seem to be optional as the more advanced features are quite a bit more taxing on computer resources of course.
On top of that it went through a visual tone overhaul, to give you more of a sense of being underground and they provided some comparison shots on that (click to enlarge):
Going even further, some performance optimizations also made their way into the game. The developer said they saw a "significant 41.8% reduction in UI overhead on the main menu" and a "5000% gain in performance" for certain parts of the in-game UI like the unit panel "taking only 0.1ms to render down from 5ms when fully populated".
Available on GOG, Humble Store and Steam. It's 85% off until April 26.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
MisterPaytwick Apr 13, 2022
Liked the game overall even back then, tho there were missing bits (not necessarily bits that DK had), but it was EA. Time to take the plunge I guess.
Last edited by rea987 on 13 April 2022 at 1:35 pm UTC
War of the Overworld is still good fun, especially if they really got the performance to good level.
Picked it up after reading this, so far enjoying it a lot. The humour is definitely an improvement over the Dungeons series, and does a much better job than Dungeons at walking the line between serious and jokey as the original franchise did. I enjoyed Dungeons 2 and 3, but so far I'm actually enjoying WFTO more.
Haven't played either of them for long time. War for the Overworld does have the original Dungeon Keeper narrator though, Richard Ridings. I remember that the writing has darker tone. Dungeons has Kevan Brighting who is known for other very sarcastic game: Stanley Parable.
Dungeons 2 has bit more over the top tone (this might also apply to the other games in the series). It's relying quite heavily on fantasy cliches to a point where it feels bit amateurish.
Difficulty curve is bit less classic (i.e. difficult) in Dungeons 2. Finishing the last levels of War for the Overworld felt like quite big accomplishment. I tried them so many times before figuring out some tactic that actually worked. Dungeons 2 increases the difficulty quite lot in optional levels, but not so much before that.
Picked it up after reading this, so far enjoying it a lot. The humour is definitely an improvement over the Dungeons series, and does a much better job than Dungeons at walking the line between serious and jokey as the original franchise did. I enjoyed Dungeons 2 and 3, but so far I'm actually enjoying WFTO more.
Haven't played either of them for long time. War for the Overworld does have the original Dungeon Keeper narrator though, Richard Ridings. I remember that the writing has darker tone. Dungeons has Kevan Brighting who is known for other very sarcastic game: Stanley Parable.
Dungeons 2 has bit more over the top tone (this might also apply to the other games in the series). It's relying quite heavily on fantasy cliches to a point where it feels bit amateurish.
Difficulty curve is bit less classic (i.e. difficult) in Dungeons 2. Finishing the last levels of War for the Overworld felt like quite big accomplishment. I tried them so many times before figuring out some tactic that actually worked. Dungeons 2 increases the difficulty quite lot in optional levels, but not so much before that.
Completely agree with the difficulty assessment... I failed the 5th mission in WFTO on my first attempt and could barely believe it. The game is much faster paced, and leans closer to traditional RTS gameplay (eg, APM helps a lot) than other genre titles.
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