14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest problems with Impire is that it’s almost imp-ossible to look at language in the same way after looking at the game and talking with the pun peddler that is Yves Bordeleau, the studio director of the Montreal-based Cyanide outfit that’s handling the development of the imp-powered title.
Impire might be based on the idea of bringing Dungeon Keeper to a modern audience but, after seeing the game during Gamescom 2012, I must say that it offers more ideas and more possibilities than the old anti-hero favorite.
Players still get to develop their own dungeon, create rooms, harvest materials and food and try and keep out a variety of greedy heroes using their own creatures and a number of traps, but Impire is about much more than that.
A circular menu makes it easy to set minions to work and to move creatures around while a squad-based mechanics allows players to mix and match their favorite fantasy creatures in order to make sure that they have the powers required to defeat the various groups of increasingly powerful heroes.
Once the dungeon is built up and the player has a couple of squads of his own fighters, he can also choose to take them to the surface of Ardania, either to raid settlements in search of resources or treasure or to simply explore the area around the dungeon and engage groups of heroes.
Impire further offers a fairly deep upgrade system for the Dungeon, the various creatures and the titular imp.
Moreover, Cyanide Montreal has plans to add multiplayer to Impire, allowing 4 players to join forces during the single-player campaign, so that they can tackle the harder difficulty settings.
There are competitive modes as well, going from simple Deathmatch to King of the Hill, and here the player gets to choose between two factions, one based around the various beats of Impire and another consisting entirely of the undead, each with its own heroes and mechanics.