Has anyone heard about Dungeons yet? It's some kind of spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper slated for February 2011. I'd never heard of it before.

Anyone know how it's affiliated with Dungeon Keeper or if it has any potential? I wonder if it's worth preordering.

It has nothing to do with Dungeon Keeper and is in fact more like Theme Dungeon than Dungeon Keeper (from all I've read).
You have to keep the adventurers happy by giving them a challenge, but not so big that it kills them outright.. or something like that.
(That's what I read six months ago anyway)

What? The objective is to NOT kill?? Where's the fun in that? Adventurers don't deserve to be happy, they barge into my house, kill my minions and steal my stuff and I'm supposed to take care of them?

Yep, we have heard. As far as I know, it's not affiliated at all, and determined to walk on the tightrope of copyright infringement. I'm not very optimistic, myself; to me, DK was more about the charm than the gameplay, and the released screenshots of Dungeon seem to be lacking the former.

Keeping adventurers happy? This game doesn't sound so great any more.

That's the way I remember it anyway, a friend of mine loves DK2 more than his mother so when I saw this game I checked it out.
I think this was the interview I read, but I'm at work so I can't really spend a lot of time on game-y sites.

Having reread the description, it sounds more fun than just keeping bastards happy

[i]Heroes will visit your dungeon in search of battle and treasure. Naturally, you could always just annihilate them with a snap of your fingers. But isn't it more entertaining and deliciously evil to watch them attain their heart's desire - and then take take it ALL away?

So throw them a few treasures and some equipment, give them a couple of fights for entertainment and cherish and look after them. And once they are finally happy enough - it's time for the "harvest". For happy heroes have more valuable soul energy for you to gleefully extract from them in your prison or torture chamber![/i]

Holy shit. You play Rupert Motherfucking Murdock! Dungeon Keeper was never quite that evil.

Sounds like fun. Sort of reminds me of Tecmo's Deception, except with more laughs.

Heh that sounds like a good side project, evil executive where your goal is to screw over innocent companies until they surrender and "merge" with you

My comment was referring to celebrity culture - build them up. Make them feel on top of the world. Then when you're done with them; tear them down. Send them into a free fall from cloud 9 to the gutter.

The corporate expansion through hostile takeovers could be your reward for successfully destroying the lives of the naive and over-popular. Thus giving you new idiots to manipulate in other regions.

Hell, this has potential!

Is that really murdoch though? Sounds more like the recording industry. I always picked rupe as the kind of guy who'd just come in and kick you in the bollocks then sue you to bankruptcy for messing up his shoes

Well he owns all the companies that do that kind of thing. The record industry merely discards people once it's done with them. Murdock's media empire, as you say, is happy to kick them in the nuts then destroy them utterly in the most public-spectacle-inducing manner possible.

There should also be selectable rival factions like a business software magnate, an entertainment software boss and soft drink king based after bill gates, bobby kotick & whoever owns coke

Also advisers patterned after evil but lesser executive monsters. Say the chief information officer could be the boss of ubisoft who requires people to have a 100% connection to company propaganda at all times or he sends antipiracy goons around to beat people up

We can call it: Captain Evil: World of Today.