Underworld Overlord will make you a VR dungeon master on Google’s Daydream

OtherSide Entertainment’s working on bringing back the feel of one of the 1990’s classic games — Ultima Underworld. And now it’s planning on an offshoot experience for Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform.

Today, the indie studio announced Underworld Overlord, a Dungeon Keeper-style game where you manage a dungeon, plotting traps and monsters, to keep a group of adventurers from plundering your underground home. It’s part-tower defense, part-god game, something we haven’t seen yet in virtual reality. And it’s OtherSide’s first VR game. The potential market for VR is $30 billion by 2020 on all platforms, advisory firm Digi-Capital forecasts, and it’s important that Google has quality software to go up against Samsung’s Gear headset and platform.

So far, GamesBeat hasn’t found any other such game in development for VR. OtherSide creative director Paul Neurath hasn’t, either.

We’re “not aware of any VR dungeon sim/god games as yet,” he said over email. “Be fun if we’re the first.”

Overlord shares creatures, characters, and lore with Underworld Ascendant. “The Underworld franchise has a history of pioneering immersive video games, so bringing it to VR is a natural fit,” Neurath also said in an earlier canned statement.

OtherSide started with a Kickstarter campaign for Underworld Ascendant, the spiritual successor on Ultima Underworld. Neurath was the creative director at Looking Glass Studios, where he worked on the landmark games Thief, Descent, and System Shock 2.