What a bad time to wake up from a long sleep. Gnarl, your minion master decided to interrupt your peaceful sleep because your predecessor screwed up big time. He not only let himself killed by some "heroes" but he also let them wreck and plunder the Dark Tower. Now it is upon you, the overlord, to set things straight and repair the tower so that it might be once again a great testament to the ultimate evil you impersonate.

To do so, you can summon minions out of spawn pits. At the beginning you can only summon brown ones that are dumb and only know how to fight up close. But later you get more powerful minions like the red ones that are resistant to fire and shoot fire bolts from the distance. The minions will follow you around and go wherever you point with your left hand. Depending on what they find on their path, they destroy, kill or plunder. Anything useful is then carried back to you. If they find weapons or other items, they'll make use of it.

Every living thing leaves behind life force after you killed it. You need to gather this in order to spawn more minions. But you are not completely helpless without them - you are an evil overlord after all. Besides your very big axe you also can use spells like the good old fireball or cast a shield around yourself.

As the game progresses and you fulfil quests and retrieve items from your tower, more tower rooms get unlocked, like the Armoury and Forge where you can forge armor and weapons for yourself.

If you are tired of being evil alone, you can activate the multi-player mode. There you can either play with another Overlord cooperatively and try to survive wave after wave of enemies or race against each other for gold or points.