AC thVRsday
In his weekly column, Android Central Senior Content Producer Nick Sutrich delves into all things VR, from new hardware to new games, upcoming technologies, and so much more.
Back in 1997, my Windows 95-era PC was graced with the honor of playing Bullfrog’s classic strategy game, Dungeon Keeper, a game that would quickly become one of my favorite strategy titles of all time. While the 1999 sequel was bigger and badder, EA would later close Bullfrog Productions, erasing my hopes for a new Dungeon Keeper entry in the future.
Thankfully, there are other people like me, and that’s how Underworld Overseer was born. Deisim developer Myron Games is one of them and has crafted a real gem of a Dungeon Keeper spiritual successor with Underworld Overseer for the Meta Quest platform — one that would be perfect for your shiny new Meta Quest 3S when the game releases this Halloween.
Like Dungeon Keeper, you’ll be building and maintaining a dungeon designed to attract underworld creatures of all sorts. From goblins to trolls, dark wizards, and imps, your job is to make the best dungeon possible for them to live in.
Of course, humans don’t care much for these sorts of creatures and will regularly invade your dungeons in an effort to stamp out all forms of what they deem evil life and it’s up to you to manage things in a way that keeps your denizens safe and prosperous, all with the power of your Meta Quest headset.
Classic strategy reborn
The moment I fired up the first early demo back in June, I was blown away by the visual quality of Underworld Overseer. To say this is the sharpest Meta Quest 3 game I’ve ever played is no exaggeration. Units come to life in crisp detail that’ll blow your mind when you see them up close, something that’s particularly potent in VR when you can use your hands to pick up any unit and inspect it.
Not only that, but Underworld Overseer builds upon Myron’s experience with Deisim, another excellent VR strategy title that feels a little bit like the PC classics Civilization and Black & White, albeit without the giant virtual pet roaming the lands.
Each of the game’s 18 levels follows the same general gameplay loop. You’ll start with a dungeon heart and a few imps. From here, you’ll mark places for the imps to dig, carving out spaces for rooms and tunnels as you make your way through each of the hand-crafted areas. Some blocks store gold and riches that will be used to pay your dungeon’s denizens — hey, they have to work for a living, too — while other treasures await discovery deeper in.
Underworld Overseer’s controls are simple to understand with little to no learning curve, especially if you’ve played any other VR strategy games. You can grab the world at any time with the grip buttons on the controller and move around, as well as use both hands to “pinch and zoom” with an inward or outward motion for better micromanagement. This comes in handy, particularly in the larger maps when you need to move around a lot to micromanage units, helping to bring in specialist combat units to deal with human intruders or move imps around for faster construction.
As you might expect from a VR strategy title, you can grab any unit in your dungeon for any reason. If any one unit is making you mad, it’s easy to permanently dispose of them by picking them up and flinging them out of existence. Most of the time, though, you’ll be using the grab tactic to move units around your dungeon for manual management, even though unit AI is quite smart. Units can only move so fast on their own, so being the godly figure you are, it makes a lot of sense to aid them with some micromanagement.
When you’re not picking up units and moving them around the map, you’ll be marking new areas for construction, moving gold around your storehouses, and digging deep to find treasures galore hidden in the depths of each map.
The game will take you around 12 hours to fully complete, but there’s always the possibility that things may take longer depending on how much of a completionist you are. Plus, playing the game on both difficulty levels presents unique challenges as the hard mode essentially requires you to micromanage units, as battles are simply too difficult to allow units to move at their own pace.
There’s even a speed run achievement for players willing to “think outside the box,” as Myron puts it, which helps put the power of VR interaction to full use.
Some strategy games I’ve played on the Quest do a good job of translating flat-screen mechanics to the VR medium, but Underworld Overseer feels like an entirely different breed of made-for-VR strategy. What’s impressive is that it does this while still evoking the powerful sense of nostalgia that comes with classic PC strategy games, all without feeling too complicated or shoed-in to somehow feel doable in VR.
What’s more is that the game is constantly exciting and I rarely ever found myself standing (or sitting) there just starting at my dungeon without something to do. This keeps the pacing right on point, something that can be painful to deal with in VR if a game is too slow.
If you’re a fan of strategy games, I’d highly recommend preordering Underworld Overseer on the Meta Horizon Store right now. You’ll get a nice discount for preordering and be ready to dive in when it’s scheduled to release later this month.
Get the best of VR with the Meta Quest 3, featuring the most powerful mobile SoC in any VR headset, the clearest lenses, and thousands of great games to play.