Games where you build a dungeon or other structure in specific ways to attract monsters for various reasons

[VastleCania]

The most obvious is of course

Dungeon Keeper

Wherein you must put various accoutrements in your evil dungeon so that you can attract stronger and more specialized creatures. These creatures are primarily used for defending your dungeon from heroes and, in the sequel, attacking rival dungeons.

Various methods for attracting monsters include:

• Building large enough rooms of various types
• Creating specifically shaped rooms
• Hoarding gold
• And I think sometimes creatures will come because you have enough of a weaker creature?

Had one sequel, Dungeon Keeper 2, and various spiritual sequels recently, like War for the Overworld and the Dungeons series.

Lesser known examples:

Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?

This one is more obscure in its methods - you must attract monsters into a semi-living ecosystem by building your dungeon in specific shapes, releasing slimes that will put nutrients back into the ground, then breaking the nutrition filled blocks to release stronger monsters. It’s…very difficult to understand, for me at least.

These monsters will defend your dungeon from heroes, like in Dungeon Keeper, but you have far less control of them. This is a more hands-off version of the game.

It received a sequel, also for the PSP, but I’m not sure of any details there.

Dungeon Maker series

These 3 games by Global A Entertainment are a little different than the previous games. They’re structured as a JRPG, including dragon-quest-like battles and dungeon exploring. However, you also make the dungeon yourself. The conceit is that you are building a dungeon to attract the monsters from the country side and away from the village. Then you go into the dungeon and fucking murder all the monsters.

This is the core loop - attract monsters, kill 'em, get resources to make the dungeon bigger/deeper, attract more powerful monsters, etc.

Attracting monsters is similar to Dungeon Keeper, but is also focused on the shape of the dungeon more specifically IIRC. Things like making dead ends or bigger rooms can make a big difference.

The game was kinda ported kinda sequeled, I think, to the DS as “Master of the Monster Lair.” It got a later sequel also on the PSP.

Some of the characters and monsters would later feature in My World My Way, a DS game that’s kind of similar except you’re a bratty princess reforming the world itself so you can kill specific monsters. There’s also Adventure to Go!, again featuring some of the same monsters, but this time it’s about, like…simulated dungeoneering or something? I can’t remember.

I can’t think of any others, but I’m sure there are more.

[BustedAstromech]

I like to call this subgenre ‘underground gardening’; it’s all about tending a structure, learning an ecosystem, and figuring out what various lifeforms need to thrive. It’s the best

[Mokushka]

Prison Architect is a game exactly about this. You build a structure and institution specifically meant to house the monsters that gradually come to fill it.

I think they’re called “wardens” and “guards”.

[daphaknee]

i think viva pinata fits into this category! you have a garden that you put different structures/decorations in to attract animals. some of the animals are MISCHIEVOUS and will fuck your garden up unless you tame them

so you’re building a garden (other structure) in a specific way to attract monsters (pinatas) for various reasons (to make them fuck/live in your garden)

[loki]

minecraft has various structures people have designed with the intention of exploiting how the game spawns certain things. like a giant machine that the game considers a large enough npc village that will keep spawning robots to protect it, but the robots fall into a pit designed to kill them and automatically put the iron they drop into a treasure chest for the player to pick up at their leisure.

also, on the subject of the dungeon maker series, the ds version also got a japan-only reskin aimed at girls, that iirc, didn’t change anything except making all the character portraits more fancy

[Alyx]

@VastleCania

Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?

There were three of these on PSP.
I loved them at the time.
I appreciated that the sequels made the system more complicated.
I’d recommend playing them in order.

You have a prep stage where you are building a dungeon before an attack which is where most of your design should be, but you can still make adjustments and activate things during the attack. At the end of the prep stage you have to place the demon lord, the ‘heroes’ objective that you are defending.

They were some of my favorite PSP games.

[bib]

yeah but why did they need to be called that, christ

[Chevluh]

@VastleCania

These monsters will defend your dungeon from heroes, like in Dungeon Keeper, but you have far less control of them. This is a more hands-off version of the game.

It’s much more indirect control but not hands-off at all.

The key thing here is that both the monsters and heroes have very specific rule-based behaviors, somewhat similar to the game of life although with a bit of randomness for the monsters, and by digging specific patterns you can manipulate the dungeon ecology very directly to both 100% reliably generate specific monsters and direct the heroes’ path to their doom, so it actually becomes a puzzle game rather than Dungeon Keeper’s capitalist proto-RTS. They’re pretty complex games in later levels and there’s gigantic japanese wikis on how to spawn what you want, although not much has been translated, sadly.

I really appreciate how elaborate a game they managed to make given that you only have one verb, to dig.

@VastleCania

It received a sequel, also for the PSP, but I’m not sure of any details there.

The first sequel adds new monster types and mutation mechanics, has a longer campaign and also basically a terrarium mode where you can freely build a dungeon and only summon heroes if you want to. IIRC it also contains the whole original game.

Note I said first: there’s actually ten games (well, nine games and a schedule management app) in the series, six of which have been localized (the others are weird spinoffs anyway). The first three are very much worth playing. This is probably a bit hard to track though because the series has changed names with each of the first three iterations due to obvious copyright shenanigans. Third one, which adds water among other things, is called No Heroes Allowed, a name which stuck for the remainder of the localized games. Most recent one’s a PSVR game!

---

Dungeon Keeper had the amusing distinction of having the Avatar, protagonist of the Ultima saga and embodiment of good, as a final boss, making it one of the earliest videogame franchise crossovers. This was a big deal back then as Ultima was EA’s flagship RPG franchise (although U8 had already poisoned the well, speaking of which it’s U8’s male design of the Avatar that appears, before that you could customize him or her so there was no definite look). It also had a secret level that only opened on full moons.

[VastleCania]

@Chevluh

a secret level that only opened on full moons.

full moons in real life, it should be noted.

[Victor]

@loki

the ds version also got a japan-only reskin aimed at girls, that iirc, didn’t change anything except making all the character portraits more fancy

thank you for this lore loki

[geist]

does tecmo’s deception count? it should, even though you’re the monster and you’re luring in the good guys. same thing in the end.

[iguferon]

i was gonna say trapt for the ps2 actually but it’s a successor to deception, so!

[eska]

i tried to make a thread in old SB about this kinda game but completely missed that just as crucial as the digging is the semi-autonomous minions! good catch

that said i loved the bits in Dungeon Keeper where like, mining for gold or treasure rooms or whatever had a big impact on the shape of your dungeon. and the same for like, Dwarf Fortress, though it’s less of a factor at that game’s scale

did anyone ever play Lego Rock Raiders? it had the whole cave-digging thing in a way i remember being really fun when i was like 10

[Khan]

God what a uniquely fucked up game. To attract the carnivorous pinatas you need to have their favorite prey and let them eat them, and then most of them ALSO need to eat an aphrodesiac prey in order to get their rocks off. also sex was a like, operation style minigame as though they have the reproductive system of a duck

[a_new_duck]

This is stretching things even further than Viva Pinata but Neko Atsume

[VastleCania]

Viva Pinata is an above-ground garden. It really is very similar to these games - an unimpressed overlord attracts creatures to use as resources in furthering their goals.

I mean, you have to smash pinata to get their candies out, it’s incredible. I played so much viva pinata on the 360 and the DS. I want a port of it to the switch, plz

[zombieman000]

MGSV’s online mode is trapping your base against human invaders stealing resources used to build up your tech tree of weapons and equipment. It gets to a point where upgrades get too expensive to stay well defended while away from the game without really feeling pressure to start dipping into microtransactions, though pvp is pretty skewed in the defender’s favor (you can respawn infinitely and the invader only gets one shot). As an invader you can eventually unlock one-hit kill weapons and stealth camo (by spending ridiculous amounts). But even with resource stealing it doesn’t hurt much to just ignore that part of the game if you don’t want to engage with it.

Um I forgot that it also comes with an iteration of MGO but I didn’t enjoy it much.

[Tegiminis]

I feel like it’s obvious and also overlaps with every genre but Dwarf Fortress. You have to build your fortress in a way that attracts and pleases your dwarves, AND it also attracts monsters based on your wealth, location, etc.

[Titus]

Animal Crossing