Dungeon Lords Preview

Introduction

Welcome to the first preview of an as-yet unreleased game here on LAN Addict! We are very excited to bring you a sneak peek at what looks to be one heck of a good game for this Spring! If you enjoy a little role-playing with your hacking and slashing, hang on to your seat, because this is going to be quite a ride!

Background

Dungeon Lords is the brainchild of D.W. Bradley and the fine folks at Heuristic Park. D.W. Bradley has been designing computer games for quite some time now. Here's a little bit about him from Heuristic Park's web site:

D. W. Bradley is one of the leading developers of Fantasy RPG games in the U.S., famous for creating three of the legendary Wizardry titles, Wizardry V – Heart of the Maelstrom, Wizardry VI – Bane of the Cosmic Forge, Wizardry VII – Crusaders of the Dark Savant, and the epic 3D Fantasy RPG, Wizards & Warriors. With their newest title, Dungeon Lords, an “RPG-Fighter”, D.W.Bradley and Heuristic Park have embarked upon creating a new type of computer game that makes a bold step forward in the genre of Fantasy RPG.

This game has been in the works since mid-2002. It's current release date is scheduled for April 20, 2005.

The Game

I've been fortunate enough to get an early build of the game to play with (thanks, Tara!) and I would like to share my impressions of this build of Dungeon Lords with you. Please keep in mind that some things may be changed in the final release.

The first thing I would like to mention is how incredibly stable this build is, even as pre-beta code. I own several games that I purchased within a week of their release that were far less stable than this! I sincerely hope that this stability carries forward into the release version of Dungeon Lords. It would certainly be a very welcome site to pop into a new game's forums and not be hammered by all of the complaints about buggy code that seem to be the norm with new games!

As for the game itself, I was pleasantly surprised right off the bat with the character generation system. There are no predefined classes in Dungeon Lords, just Abilities and Skills. There are six Abilities in Dungeon Lords; Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Agility, Vitality, and Honor. Raising an Ability score or a Skill costs Advance Points. The cost for raising an Ability is 50 times your current score in the Ability you wish to raise. Skill costs are modified by your Intelligence Ability score, but appear to start at 500 Advance Points for the first rank and go up by 100 Advance Points per rank thereafter. This is why I've raised my character's Intelligence at about the same rate as his Agility and Dexterity. ;-)

Select a Page Page 1: Introduction Page 2: The Game, Con't Page 3: Conclusion