Sawbuck Gamer

Atomic Creep Spawner

Playing For Creeps

You are the bad guy in Atomic Creep Spawner, but the hero’s kind of a jerk.

By Derrick Sanskrit • January 21, 2013

Sawbuck Gamer is our daily review of a free or cheap ($10 or less) video game. 

Atomic Creep Spawner
Developer: deepnight
Platform: Browser
Price: Free

It’s fun being the bad guy. There’s none of that pesky responsibility getting between you and your good time. The only problem is there’s always a hero mucking things up. Don’t you just loathe that guy? Sébastian Bénard knows what I’m talking about. That’s why he made Atomic Creep Spawner for the most recent Ludum Dare 48-hour game-making competition.

Players take the role of the omnipresent overlord in a generic retro dungeon crawler. That aforementioned hero busts in, steals your fat stacks of ill-begotten gold, and smashes your ominous glowing red orbs. They really tied the place together! Time to channel your rage into dark magic, summoning zombies and other obstacles to destroy that rotten hero.

This tiny switch of perspective makes Atomic Creep Spawner refreshing, as does the hero’s dialogue, which should seem familiar to anyone who has ever slapped on a headset during an online multiplayer game. Expressions like “facepalm,” “noob,” and the ever-popular “Worst. Dungeon. Ever.” pop up above the hero’s head. Are all good guys this infuriating? No wonder everybody hates the X-Men. At least Wolverine never broke into my house and started smashing all my stuff—though if he did, I’d sure love to throw waves of mindless zombies at him from afar.

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  • Aurora Boreanaz

    Hooray for more Dungeon Keeper-like games!  It’s always fun to dabble in a little evil and mayhem.

    One I found recently that I enjoy is a reverse tower defense game called Villainous:

    http://www.kongregate.com/games/Rete/villainous

    You train and organize troops to try and make it past the defense towers on each map.  Any who survive to reach the enemy’s base come back in the next “wave” until they’re all killed.  You then use “infamy” to purchase upgrades.

    • http://twitter.com/HttpLovecraft Http Lovecraft

      Can you start an RSS feed called ‘Aurora Boreanaz’s list of Dungeon-Keeper like games’ and just let us know whenever one of these comes out?  This has got to be the out-of-fashion genre I miss the most.

      I’m dying for a decent (3D graphics not required) clone of Evil Genius/Dungeon Keeper for Android and should such a thing exist I would miss every bus/subway stop ever.

  • PaganPoet

    That game was pretty adorable, but damn, it was hard. I only got to the second dungeon and the wizard obliterated me. I would have liked more monster options. Only three types, and the zombies and ghosts are too easy to kill.

    • Fluka

      Well, there were only two dungeons anyway.

      An zombie-heavy strategy worked for me in the second dungeon.  I got a few of the large monsters, but the most effective strategy was just to create a massive overflow of zombies (like, 20 bursts).  Eventually, the wizard can’t move and his health is draining pretty fast.

      • RidleyFGJ

        It doesn’t hurt to toss a couple of ghosts at him, as well; they slow them down even further, especially if he’s already too busy hacking away at zombies.