Overlord Demo Impressions

A couple of days ago Dutch game developer Triumph Studios (known from Age of Wonders) finally unleashed the PC demo of their Dungeon Keeper-inspired game Overlord on the world. In case you hadn't heard about this game: it's a third person action game of sorts, in which you are the evil overlord who has risen back to power after your predecessor's defeat. However, rather than wasting your time smashing things up to instill fear in the local populace - you'll be controlling hordes of minions to do the smashing for you.

This demo offers a tutorial as well as a segment of singleplayer gameplay from the very beginning of the game. It doesn't offer any multiplayer gameplay, which will be extensively present in the full game. Both PC and Xbox 360 demos are available, but I'll be covering the PC version of course. Upon downloading and installing this 1 GB demo, you'll be thrown into a slightly twisted, but humorous, fantasy world - if only for a short time...



The moment you start up the Overlord demo you're thrown back in time to when the Dungeon Keeper series was still around. Rather than some bland company promotion screens, Triumph opted for a more humorous - albeit not entirely original - approach by letting the in-game minions handle the introductions. It's a nice added touch that gets you pumped for some evil rampages across the idyllic countrysides of the Overlord game world, watching your minions smash everything to bits... but is that really what it's like?

Not quite, but we'll get to that later, first up in this demo is the tutorial. After having been dug out from the ground by your minions, you meet your adviser minion who guides you through the basic gameplay elements such as minion control and combat. It's not very extensive, but then this game doesn't seem to be very complex either - and it certainly explains everything clearly. In this regard it's several light years (pun intended) ahead of the last demo I reviewed - there's no way you'll be confused in this demo!


After completing the tutorial segment you'll travel back to your seat of power, eloquently named 'the tower', where your adviser explains that a vital power source for your tower's teleportation mechanism is missing. It just so happens that enough energy is left in there to teleport you to the last known location of this 'Tower's Heart' and thus starts your first quest: retrieve the power source - to begin your conquest of the world, har har!

Upon arriving at your destination it's revealed that you can spawn minions from set spawning points on the map - and initially you'll be stuck with one (of four) minion types, namely the Brown attackers. The rest cannot be unlocked in this demo, but apparently have to be discovered later on. As you walk about the - rather linear - world and have your minions smash sheep for life force (used to gain more minions) or barrels/whatever else for weaponry and items you're swiftly sidetracked into helping a farmer reclaim his mine from evil halflings.

This is where Overlord starts differing from my expectations quite a bit. Even in the short gameplay segment featured in this demo you spend quite some time helping out the local populace against greater evils, supposedly to gain their loyalty. Apparently you can kill these people, but that works against you later on in the game. Not quite as evil as I had hoped, but somehow it's not entirely all that disappointing either.


Even though you're not actually slaughtering the local populace and roaming about the countryside, the Overlord demo does prove quite enjoyable. There's humor in some of the assignments you're handed out (such as kicking about your jester to make him respect you) and it's just fun watching your horde of minions race in and pillage everything in sight. After destroying a couple of barrels they'll return to you with gifts like gold coins and potions, but they'll also use some parts as armor or weaponry - with the infamous melon-heads being the preferred option for minions in the demo...

Further enjoyable is the interactivity of the world. While it does all come across quite scripted, it's cool to see your minions push against a fallen pillar to move it out of your way - or to smash your axe through a wall so that it falls and forms a bridge over a river. Best of all has to be setting fire to ricefields to annihilate the evil halflings in the area (although I unintentionally also torched some of my own followers - ah well, you can just summon some back anyway).

Towards the end of the demo you're even allowed to replenish health and mana by sacrificing your minions, who happily jump to their deaths for your sake. And then you're even faced by a boss-type creature who smashes through your minions like they're nothing - so you have to engage in battle yourself, smashing it with your axe as your minions surround it and try to do what little damage they can. A pretty cool fight and a promise of things to come... to bad that combat sequence also marks the end of the demo.


And with that we've arrived at the less enjoyable aspects of Overlord's demo. Contrary to what you might expect from a 1 GB file this demo really only provides enough gameplay for half an hour tops (probably less for most players). It's also not very replayable, because the experience is very linear - and exploration really is limited to just a bunch of small side roads with crates to smash or sheep to kill. Although the ending sequence promoting the full version does seem to suggest less slightly linearity further in the game, it does seem to be a very story-restricted game, rather than an open-ended slaughterfest like Dungeon Keeper. It's also a bit goody for a supposed evil game, but that doesn't necessarily detract from the experience.

Another aspect of Overlord's gameplay that felt a bit weird, although not necessarily bad, was actually controlling your overlord and his minions. Somehow the mouse control felt quite unresponsive and not having any form of crosshair or mouse pointer on screen didn't seem to fit with the kind of game this is. On the other hand it's cool that the game is entirely based around context-sensitive actions - and as such seems pretty intelligent. Pointing at crates will have your minions smash them, pointing at a broken pillar will have them move it, pointing at loot will have them carry it back to you and locking on to a mana shrine will send in one of your minions for a mana boost. I suppose it's just a matter of getting used to this form of control, but it still felt like there was a distinct lack of control without a crosshair or pointer on screen.



In the end the Overlord demo proves to offer an enjoyable 30 minutes of gameplay, but not without it's flaws. I rather liked the demo in spite of it's flaws, but it's probable that some amongst you will not. It's not quite a masterpiece of brilliantly evil gameplay like Dungeon Keeper was, but it's the next best thing. Hopefully the full version will turn out to improve on the linearity aspect - in which case it should certainly prove to be an entertaining experience.

Gameplay 7/10
Graphics 8/10
Sound 8/10
Story 6/10

Value - 72%

(Note: amongst the above-mentioned scores Value stands for the entertainment derived from this game. That is my final score - and is not reflective of previous scores for other aspects of the game. The only thing that matters in the end is the enjoyability of a game - and I wanted to represent that by means of a Value score. Also note that all scores are based on the '5 is average' model, so a 7 is far from bad.)



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