Strategy game The Deadly Path is Dungeon Keeper with a writhing helping of tabletop time management

Countless are the pretenders to Dungeon Keeper‘s skull-buttressed throne, but I sense a certain fearful promise in The Deadly Path, a building management and roguelike strategy game from Owlskip Enterprises. The setup here is that you’re stuck in a tabletop underworld with a bunch of elder gods, or Dread Deities. As Custodian of this dusty funereal expanse, you must place structures on tiles around your throne room, striving to fulfil the desires of whichever Dread Deity is in play, while fending off pernicious attackers from the realm of light. Here’s a trailer.

The main thing I dislike about the trailer is the tone, which is on the quippy side. This is more a question of taste, mind. I prefer my cosmic horror devoid of whimsy, please and thank you. Yog-Sothoth isn’t some kind of menacing party clown for you to throw punchlines at. Mortals are supposed to recoil from such entities weeping and wailing as their minds empty of sanity like punctured fire extinguishers, not cock an eyebrow at the camera and say something like “you don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps!!!!”

A touch of gallows humour can be useful, here and there, but it has to be properly deathly. That man in the trailer sounds like he’s having fun being the servant of incomprehensible dark forces. It’s atrocious!

Beyond that, I like the cut of these gibbering undead stooges. As you can see from the footage, much hinges on adroit navigation of multiple, competing timers. The end goal in each game appears to be fashioning an idol of some kind, so that your chosen Dread Deity may Ascend.

The card art is nicely dense with detail, and the lore text is as overripe as you’d expect from a work of Lovecraftage. Consider The Vein of Jealousy, one of the game’s festering divinities – “a gargantuan five-headed mass of thrombosed veins that spouts liquid envy as it sees fit, spreading a trail of infectious resentment and bitterness in its wake”. Aside from building up a network of minion production and housing facilities, you can advance between ages to “uncover new gods, loot, portals and possibilities.”

You might know Owlskip – founded by Tim Sheinman – as the developer behind political satire Conspiracy! and investigative music history game Family, which Alice B (RPS in peace) described as “a lovely little gem to spend an afternoon with.” Shienman is a dab hand for games in which you sift through and join up documents and memorabilia to various effect. I can see how his skillset would translate naturally to an eldritch strategy experience of this nature.

The Deadly Path hath yet no end, by which I mean, no release date. Read more on Steam.