Who knows what crease in Nippon Ichi’s psyche draws the developer continually back to the anti-hero. Perhaps its scriptwriters were picked on by prefects at school, or maybe the CEO was never any good at team sports. Whatever the reason, from Disgaea to Makai Kingdom, the studio has rarely cast players as anything but a demonic villain hell-bent on the destruction of everything good and respectable in its games. It’s more than just a decision to dodge the comfortable fantasy cliché of knights in shining valour. They understand the perverse delight that comes from surrendering to absolute corruption, of assuming the role of an amiable hyper-villain, especially one hapless enough to be mocked and glorified in equal measure.

Badman – as we’ll refer to it in shorthand, acknowledging that our time on this page, not to mention this earth, is limited and that a tortuously long game title is a joke that tickles just the once – is no different, at least in terms of its theme. You play as the God of Destruction, a supreme, disembodied entity charged with designing a labyrinthine underground lair, complete with its own devilish ecosystem, ready to entrap and destroy any would-be adventurers who enter it. It’s a good premise that clothes a framework that defies simple classification. Part Tower Defense-esque, part-architecture ‘em up, part ant-farm biology class, it’s a game that draws from a great many traditions, seasoning its hotchpotch systems with an 8-bit aesthetic that hammers home the premise’s subversion of RPG tradition.

Your only mode of interaction with the game world is via a pickaxe, primarily used for hollowing out the cave system that will form an underground fortress for your as-yet-unborn horde to roam. You have a few minutes to make preparations, digging chambers and tunnels like you’re on a Dwarf Fortress speed run, before one or more archetypal RPG heroes storm your dungeon with a view to murdering your minions and carrying off your main disciple, the titular Badman. If they manage to make it out of your dungeon alive, with Badman in tow, the game is over and you’ll need to start again from scratch, in an effort to build a less penetrable fortress and a more sustainable army.

You can read the rest of this review over at Eurogamer here