This was another last minute idea, when a lot of my bigger ideas needed pushing back to 2025. I needed two games that I could quickly break down and discuss and a story idea that was pretty simple in terms of execution. I came up with the assistant manager of evil idea and sort of spun everything from there. The plot started getting busier as I went along, as is often the case, but still felt they were at manageable levels of ambition.
Writing it was a breeze, thankfully. I know Dungeon Keeper well enough to map out my criticism and only needed a quick replay for a refresh, and Evil Genius 2 is a game I returned to only recently so that was fresh in the memory too.
The story side of things was a lot of fun, really enjoyed coming up with the different characters and the scenarios that I might find myself in while trying to run an evil lair. I initially had an idea about building a room, to tie it into the game’s theme, so I went with a torture chamber because I could do something funny with that, like an interrogation scene or at least unique background noises. From the construction site beat I got the idea of a workplace accident to cap off the scene, and that led me to thinking up a meeting between me and the goblin union.
I needed a way to end the episode so I needed a spark that would lead to an army storming the castle to kill me, as that’s the death scene I had in mind and I’d already gathered audio assets to make that work. I originally thought about having a rival evil lord attack me but that made no sense, it came out of nowhere and I don’t tend to like these things to have zero set up, and setting it up would take up too much real estate in the episode. So I went back through the episode for an inciting incident and the only one that made sense was my vague interrogation scene idea. I made it on someone more important – more of a character – and then had the interrogation go horribly wrong.
My friend Foxy (who I had podcasted with over at 1UP Pod during the post-Chip era) had previously told me that he would be up for doing some voice acting on the show at some point, so this felt like a perfect opportunity. I knew Dungeon Keeper was one of his favourite games of all time, and I had a vague concept of a character for the episode in mind, so I asked him if he’d like to do the voice. Once I got confirmation, I fleshed out the role more so it would play into what I thought were his strengths, and thus Prince Valentius was born.
If Foxy couldn’t record for this episode, I would’ve done something else. I would’ve likely just had the interrogation scene go wrong and then I’d find out after the fact that he was a prince, just cut the character’s dialogue out entirely, but that would mean losing a lot of great stuff in the scene. I was already voicing myself, the various goblins (their voices were hard to edit), and the Dark Lord. I did not want to do another one.
With Foxy locked in, I wrote as many vulgar insults for him to read as I could think up. I just wanted to hear Foxy deliver them. I did have an additional scene planned out which focused entirely on Prince Valentius and his adventurer’s party, before he’s kidnapped. But I couldn’t quite get a scene transition to work in an audio medium at the time, and I wasn’t 100% sure I could do the extra voice work. It was only after editing was done that I had an idea of the scene transition, and it was a really good one, but I was happy enough that I didn’t use it because the extra voice work would’ve been a chore in itself.
However, it was a shame to lose that scene because I wanted to show what Prince Valentius is like with his own men – give him a little extra depth – and it would have introduced a small dog that the party had adopted along the way. I was going to include the small dog barking its way into the castle gates with the horde of soldiers in the final scene, too. Pretty sure I nicked that idea from South Park but I would’ve done it, regardless.