Reverse Gaming: a look back at Evil Genius

This top-down strategy game allows one to design the evil lair dreams are made of (inside a volcano on a remote island of course), complete with treasure rooms, extensive research laboratories, holding cells and traps galore.

Once construction of your control room is complete you’ll be able to send your agents of evil out into the world and commit dastardly deeds, from shrinking and stealing the Eiffel Tower to kidnapping world leaders, or even just destroying the Darwin National Park because you can. The gameplay allows you to control the difficulty: the more agents you send into the world at a time: the more ‘heat’ you build: the more valiantly the agents of good try to take you down.

To distract enemy agents, and keep nosy tourists away, you’ll need to build a cover operation: a luxury resort away from the entrance to your base and train your minions to keep them entertained.

And the traps, oh the traps. With hundreds of different trigger/consequence combinations one can find amusement for hours simply watching enemy agents fall in a myriad of ways into the traps you have constructed. Exploding palm trees, comically over-sized Venus fly traps and killer bees are just the tip of the iceberg, with piranhas and flamethrowers lurking somewhere underneath.

Overall Evil Genius is a fun and strangely addictive distraction from the real world, something you can lose hours to or just play for a few minutes at a time.

- Ellah Rose