Old Games I Still Love: Evil Genius

Evil Genius, where do I even start with this gem of a game? One of the few games to take the Dungeon Keeper formula and do something good (or evil) with it. After playing to death the Dungeon Keeper games this was the game I turned to and it was carried a large part by it's setting with me, I am definitely a fan of the whole comic take on a 70's James Bond/Cold War setting. I spent many an hour perfecting complex trap layouts, the perfect looking base layout and trying to find the best set-up of henchmen and minions to do my evil bidding.

Everyone starts somewhere.. Even Evil Geniuses.

The start sees you land on a desert island of indeterminate origin with your titular Evil Genius, a henchmen and a small band of worker minions. From there much as in Dungeon Keeper you lay out corridors, plan out rooms, place furniture and equipment, place traps, sensors and security camera's. All whilst doing your utmost to prevent the forces of justice from interfering with your nefarious plans. Aside from the building aspect there is also the World Domination screen, a world map which sees you sending off your minions and henchmen to perform various acts of infamy for loot and recognition (and usually money.)

You could have a vast array of helpful minions from the humble and disposable worker to marksmen, spin-doctors and martial artists. You have no direct control of your minions instead a 'tag' system for how they interact with targets and use of security camera's and loud-speakers gives you a pretty hands off way of manipulating your lackeys.

Of course you can't do this without consequence as the various intelligence agencies around the globe get ever more irked at your evil doing and start sending ever more dangerous agents to deal with you. It generally begins with investigators coming to your island in an attempt to find evidence of your evil deeds to report back to their superiors, if they escaped with information your 'heat level' would increase and more dangerous responses would be sent. Thieves and infiltrators would attempt to steel back your ill gotten gains, whilst saboteurs would try and cripple your base (usually blowing up power generators.) Then there were the soldiers, the shoot first, shoot again and usually keep shooting anything and everything until it was dead or exploded. Finally, the super agents who could usually mow down your minions and even permanently kill your more powerful henchmen.

What I did like about dealing with enemy agents was they were always given an assigned mission, such as sabotage something or steal back some priceless treasure. However they only had a set time to complete it so if they got distracted by social minions or delayed by traps they could run out of time and leave. If they left without finishing their mission or seeing anything nefarious you would actually lower your global heat rating.

You could even construct a hotel to distract roaming tourists and investigators but in general it was horribly expensive and never seemed to do that good a job. Though I often still built one anyway, just a shame it didn't make you any money (always felt like an oversight to me.)

Having trouble with someone? Stir them up in the Mixing Bowl!

There's a lot of fun to be had in Evil Genius, from watching some disturbingly hilarious interrogation devices squeezing information (sometimes literally) out of those pesky do-gooders to watching a new henchman's special abilities in action. One of my personal favourite things was the traps system especially once you research and unlock some of the more advanced sensors and traps to use. I sometimes spent hours making perhaps overly complex trap systems, though that did get you bonus money and notoriety for particularly successful ones. Also I just love watching a fully functioning base running with technician's maintaining equipment to guards hauling prisoners off to holding cells, I am just that kind of gamer.

Taken five minutes before saboteurs turned half of this into ash and body bags.

I'd say the strongest points of Evil Genius are as follows in my opinion:

• Art Style and Animations: The stylised visuals and excellent animations ensure this game is easy on the eyes even by today's standards. Everything from the small details of how a minion carries a prisoner the the various interrogation devices ensure there is always something to amuse the Evil Genius in all of us.
• Base Building: The sheer amount of rooms, objects and traps you could build kept me a very happy base builder indeed. One can only hope the sequel dials it up to an extra evil eleven! I am a massive fan of base builders being a self confessed turtle in strategy games.
• Setting: The comic take on 70's spy fiction makes it feel like an interesting mix between James Bond and Austin Powers. I don't think it would work anywhere near as well if it had gone for the realism route.
• Traps: The traps system is one of the better I have seen in a game like this allowing fairly complex multi-layer trap systems to be built and when they work. Oh boy is it satisfying to watch it working.

The World Domination screen in all it's clunky glory!

The game is far from perfect and now with a sequel in the works I am hoping the developers address some of this old classics quirks and faults:

• Clunky Interface: This can get irritating on occasion due to the 'tag' system as you can only directly control your henchmen and Evil Genius. Not to mention an overall lack of feedback across the board can make busy bases tricky to manage when under attack.
• World Domination Mode: A part of it is due to the lack of interface feedback when in the base part of the game. Though in general I think much more could have been done with it.
• Difficulty: I am a fan of challenging games don't get me wrong but you can get to a point in this where you hit a death spiral that can take a couple of hours before you realise it. 
• Hotel System: Honestly for the expense it never seemed to work enough to justify it meaning you had something which cost a whole pile of money that might only distract a handful of tourists or agents.

This game is genuinely one of my all time favourites which likely wouldn't surprise anyone given my love of Dungeon Keeper style games. Which meant the news of a sequel becoming official means I am more than a little hyped. On the off chance one of the dev's stumbles across this humble blog I leave some potential ideas and thoughts for the sequel beyond the 'More of everything cool!' ideas.

• Improved Interface/UI: Especially in regard to the world domination mode, as there was only a brief hard to see pop-up when enemy agents were active on that map. Far too often I'd be busy building in my base and not see the brief number pop up telling me minions were dying on the world map. The tag system could likely be improved, perhaps set global orders or even orders for specific minions and targets. One example could be to have social minions all attempt to weaken and distract investigators and guards to always capture or kill enemy soldiers etc.
• More Ways to Make Money: Never really made sense that you could only go out and steal on the world map. Maybe have it so you can set-up front companies taking a page out of the old Gangsters games. Perhaps even have it so if the hotel system returns it allows you to make money?
• Different Evil Base Locations: Perhaps on top of the desert island and the jungle volcano lair some I'd like to see are an arctic base, an underwater base, perhaps even a moon base? Just a few ideas.
• Multi-Level Bases: This one would be tricky to pull off unless they limited it to like 2 or 3 levels. It would however be a pretty neat feature and allow for some pretty massive bases.
• Custom Evil Genius: Being able to create your own evil genius, select abilities, appearance, maybe base or minion style would be so awesome especially if there are more RPG like mechanics put into the game this time around. 

That is it for this blog post though, took me long enough, not entirely sure if it made sense but if you'll excuse me, I better get back to conquering the world!