MachiaVillain is a Dungeon Keeper-esque strategy game that has the player taking over the management of an evil mansion. Players are tasked with setting up an ideal evil mansion that will kill any incoming visitors that make the grave mistake of walking into it, similar to the Dungeon Keeper franchise. The game was officially released on Steam on the 16th May 2018 and has been developed by Wild Factor, the team behind Freaking Meatbags, a fun roguelike available on Steam also.
How to Download MachiaVillain
The game can be downloaded both from Steam and GOG.com. In order to commence your download, you should click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The Game Review
The story for the game is next to non-existent, as the story is pretty much just that all of these horror monsters wish to sleep and live out their lives in this haunted house, but eventually, these monsters are going to need food. The best way to get food, however, is through the killing of any helpless fools that wander into the haunted house.
In MachiaVillian the player is tasked with creating a haunted mansion that can house all of the creepy monsters living within it and all of their malicious traps. The mansion can be expanded on numerous times to allow for bigger rooms, allowing for more storage or more elaborate traps, all depending on the player’s preference. As time goes on, the number of monsters the player has to take care of increases and the number of humans that come to the mansion will increase also.
Humans in the game are both a threat and a food source. By not being too careful, humans will kill the player’s monsters, and if they are out of monsters and the requisite resources to make more of them, it will end up being game over from there. Monsters need to be fed, however, so the humans are a necessary evil and any humans that fail to escape the mansion safely will be used as a resource for the hungry evil creatures to stay in the mansion and grow in strength. In the haunted house, it’s recommended to take down the humans in the cheesiest horror movie ways possible, by setting up seemingly obvious traps for them to get caught out by, and if they do, the player will be rewarded for their creativity with their deadly maze.
From an aesthetic point of view, MachiaVillian has rather distinct visuals that give it a somewhat cartoonish look, without going overboard and becoming ridiculous for many players. This style has been seen before, however, and looks rather similar to the game, Prison Architect, a game it clearly takes inspiration from quite prominently. Prison Architect isn’t the only game that it takes inspirations from, however, the game also has a lot of similar systems to RimWorld, a game very similar in nature to Prison Architect and will remind players of MachiaVillian and Prison Architect if they’ve played either of those games.
MachiaVillian may not have the most original gameplay mechanics, but its general approach is definitely one of a more unique nature. For anyone that loved the original Dungeon Keeper series and wants a reason to jump back into the genre, then they can definitely do worse than this one!
