Malignus: you are the dungeon, and your minions have opinions about everything

Malignus states its references plainly: Dungeon Keeper and RimWorld. The first for the fantasy of ruling an underground lair, the second for inhabitants with personalities, moods and breakdowns.

The mix is promising, and the demo already shows it works.

Your Master rules from the throne. Your minions dig rooms, haul loot and guard prisoners. Six monster races are playable, goblins, kobolds, orcs, gnolls, bugbears and ogres, each with its strengths. And each minion can have dozens of possible traits, complaints, moments when they will not toe the line. That is RimWorld's legacy: you do not manage units, you manage strong personalities.

The dungeon is carved out of hard rock, with workshops, beds, thrones and altars. Traps are the highlight: dart launchers, spinning blades, flamethrowers, gas, tesla coils, spider webs, all wireable to pressure plates, tripwires, sensors, levers and timers. You can build genuine death machines.

You also have to defend what you stole. You raid surface villages, and adventurers come to take their loot back, in ever larger invasions: six races, ten classes, more than forty traits. Survivors end up in chains and are interrogated for their secrets, because a proper dungeon needs prisoners.

It all plays with up to four people in co-op, in a shared dungeon.

Malignus will launch in Early Access, with no announced date yet. The demo is available on Steam, and it is a good way to see whether your minions obey you any better than mine obey me.

Budding dungeon keepers gather on the InsertCoins Discord, to compare their nastiest traps.