The Naheulbeuk serie is one with a long and complicated history that would be way too long to summarize here, so let's just say it was really influencial in my childhood and leave the context at that. Needless to say, I was fucking overjoyed to see them making a management game out of it, because if there's one thing I love more than going ham on themes & symbolisms, it's building shit for hours on end.
Dungeon Master, as you can imagine, makes you manage a dnd dungeon. And I do mean you're the manager, not the boss; the actual boss is lounging around doing fuck-all and occasionally barking orders at you while being completely disconnected to the reality of his business. Which is hilarious, btw. Naheulbeuk is a humorous serie, but it's also really fucking old, so I was afraid that some of the humor would be dated and cringe- but nope, it's funny as hell. I am very weak to "corporate humor" in general, I think the concept of elves going on strikes is the funniest shit ever.
But while fun dialogues is a rarity among management games, that's not why we play those. We're here for the gameplay. So what IS teh gameplay like?
It's pretty classic, all things considered; you've got to make sure your employees are cared for (restrooms, bedrooms, breakrooms, ect) you want it to be tailored to each specie (elves like things to be VERY clean, orcs want things to be dirty af, drows can't have fun in breakrooms and instead need prisons to keep themselves entertained...) There isn't all that much of a "dungeon" aspect, which is a bit of a shame. Of course you can have various workshops where your employees will produce ressources, but when heroes do break into your dungeon, they're not really that hard to beat. Most of your revenue will come from the tavern anyways, not from anything the dungeon actually does.
The base concept is good mind you, I personally don't mind playing Company Simulator 2023 with a fantasy paint on it, but the game has a couple issues so far. First of all, some of the mechanics are poorly explained imo; I only managed to take full advantage of the tavern after the devs posted some tricks and tips on how this shit works. Second of all, your employees will quit. All the time. If their needs aren't satisfied, they're gonna quit, and boy is it hard to keep them satisfied. I've seen people blame the pathfinding of the AI (these people will train to exhaustion and then claim they weren't provided showers) I've seen others say that the trick is just to have many types of rooms scattered everywhere, idk. I wish you had a bit more info on why a given employee quit (which need wasn't met? Where was the bitch when he started starving?) but also I wish there was just a lil bit more of micromanagement available. Just being able to say "hey you bitches are restricted to x floor" would do wonders.
At the time I'm writing this tho, the game is still playable (there's been a couple patches since launch, thank god.) and it took me about ten hours to reach the point where I was feeling like I was running in circle. To me that makes it a pretty ok game, not amazing but not horrible either. If you're like me and you've been craving something new for years, go the fuck for it. Otherwise you're probably gonna have more fun with Tavern Master or Dungeon Keeper.