With cash in hand the team fluctuated between 15 and 20, including staff in Australia, Hong Kong and Russia, but that still wasnвЂ™t enough to take them anywhere close to their intended deadline. Not bad for a game which didn't have a famous name and didn't have any of the original staff onboard.ДЇor the next two and half a years вЂ“ long past the originally promised Summer 2013 release date вЂ“ Subterranean worked from bedrooms across the globe.

And that went well.вЂќ It did, to the tune of ВЈ211,371. Then towards the end of 2012 I went and set up the company officially, and we did the Kickstarter. Then we picked up Unity and started working on it again, and we were pretty happy with what we were ending up with, and more and more people who seemed like a good fit were joining the project. So we put a more structured team together and we worked a bit on the Unreal prototype, but UDK at the time did not suit this kind of thing. вЂњWe thought letвЂ™s try and get realistic and put something together properly. The years passed by with plenty of ideas put to paper and the team вЂњknowing what we were going to copy and what we were going to do newвЂќ, but it wasnвЂ™t until 2012 that what would be War for the Overworld truly became a going concern. There was random people making character models or concept art, bits of prototypes. вЂњIt was sort of a disorganised collective of people wanting to do things for a while. Josh Bishop, CEO and Creative Director at Subterranean Games, playtests the penultimate level of War For The Overworld's campaign.ДЄlthough the various participants created вЂњthis massive mountain of ideasвЂќ over three or four years of online collaboration, it wasnвЂ™t really going anywhere. вЂњWe were incredibly inexperienced, now weвЂ™re a little bit inexperienced.вЂќ вЂњTo say we had much idea of what we were doing back when we started would be a bit of a lie,вЂќ admits Bishop. Their impetus was simple but clear: вЂњWe just wanted a new Dungeon Keeper game.вЂќ It took a while to truly get going, as most people were young and inexperienced, and the tools which power so many of todayвЂ™s smaller games just werenвЂ™t ready yet вЂ“ let alone the new funding models which could make ideas a reality without needing publisher backing.

вЂњPeople were initially talking about it six, seven years ago on this site, and itвЂ™s just slowly, slowly grown since then,вЂќ Bishop explains. I have little doubt that, even this many years on, the game that Bishop once referred to as вЂDungeon Keeper 3вЂ™ remains this teamвЂ™s life. Booze, pizza and boardgames abound, there are a host of powerful-looking PCs on the downstairs floor, and itвЂ™s a place IвЂ™d give my right arm to live in, but at the same time I can see how its being a workplace is preventing it from being a home too. вЂњThe entire existence of the team and the project formulated on a Dungeon Keeper fansite,вЂќ he tells me in the cavernous kitchen of the enormous Brighton house which seven Subterranean staff (and a few partners) now both live and work in. While he and Subterranean GamesвЂ™ impending unofficial remake/sequel War for the Overworld is very much a job, itвЂ™s also the culmination of a passion project almost a decade in the making. Young, thin, bespectacled, dressed in a Reddit t-shirt with a now-month-old Rezzed wristband and a first edition Pebble watch on one wrist, his manner quietly confident but without evident arrogance, the Brighton, UK resident is about as far a cry from my mental image of the executives who decide the fate of the official Dungeon Keeper as itвЂ™s possible to get. He leads a studio which has reached as many as 20 members, heвЂ™s received ВЈ200,000 in Kickstarter pledges, heвЂ™s had Peter MolyneuxвЂ™s blessing and an implicit agreement that rightsholder EA would look the other way, he's got original narrator Richard Ridings onboard and tomorrow, all being well, it all comes to fruition. The 22-year-old is on the verge of releasing what is intended to be the first faithful follow-up to beloved strategy/management/Imp-slapping title Dungeon Keeper in 16 years. War for the Overworld creative director Josh Bishop uses the word вЂridiculousвЂ™ quite a bit.

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