15 Most Headscratchingly Awful Video Game Redesigns
7. Dungeon Keeper
Dungeon Keeper, a classic PC strategy game, was turned into a mobile game so utterly money grubbing it breaks your heart.
In Dungeon Keeper, players construct a fantasy dungeon, conquering the landscape and stopping any would-be heroes that may oppose them, using imps as a workforce to construct traps and control the natural ecology. If there's any strategy game that could be convincingly turned to mobile, it was this.
So how did it go wrong? The bane of mobile gaming: Microtransactions.
EA's mobile reboot, like any mobile game, had free virtual currencies, and far superior "gems" that you could buy and spend. Gems were supposed to make carving a path underground easier and quicker. Far easier, in fact.
If you didn't pay up, simply carving out a lone tile could take hours, or even a day. A mere three by three room could take an entire weekend. Eventually, you would have to spend virtual currency to upgrade your coffers, just to be able to store enough virtual currency to make dungeon upgrades.
Or just spend a few real dollars, and it'd be done in seconds. Nothing's quicker than cash.