Dominus

Dominus is a video game in the strategy genre developed by Visual Concepts Entertainment, Inc. and published by U.S. Gold Ltd. originally released in 1994. It is currently playable on DOS.

One of those true classics that broke the mold and proved to be a building block in the creation of other clones.

Dominus gives you control of a small kingdom just before hordes of deadly creatures start invading you looking to plunder all your resources. Your kingdom consists of acres of land, ranging from your castle, through stages of populated areas, to wilderness areas, all of which are filled with tasty resources. Under your control are your four generals and their armies of creatures as diverse as they are lethal.

For example, one of the most important features of Dominus is the ability to create a myriad of different traps. You can assign an army to work on creating traps for you while you perform other tasks or you can create the blueprints yourself, linking a trigger with an effect (one of my all-time favorites is the Chest-Thing trap).

Magic is also available and can be used to do all sorts of nasty things to your enemies, you start equipped with an extensive list of spells and a few components to mix them up. The spells range from Disintegrate to Polymorph and all have a different use: Net, for example, can be used to trap enemies and allow you to drag them back to your dungeon, where they can be interrogated and used in your own armies, then you can use the polymorph spell on them and turn them into several different creatures, my favorite being the draconians who can be polymorphed into ferocious fire-breathing dragons.

Creatures can be used for very specific purposes and fight well against certain types of enemies, most combinations are fairly obvious, such as Water Elementals which are stronger against Fire enemies. When you have a large selection of creatures, up to six can be magically fused together to form one large heroic creature, and there are numerous combinations and effects, I'm pretty sure I haven't seen them all but I keep trying.

I tend to refer to this game as the original Dungeon Keeper, only replete with many more types of monsters and slightly more pixelated graphics. This game has definitely crept into my favorites list, and is still replayable to this day.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.