Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? is a refreshing new title (literally) published in the United Stated by NIS America. The game forgoes sophisticated polygons and adopts classic retro sprites. You play as the God of Destruction, and have been summoned by the Overlord to help him rid the wannabe heroes who have been sent to capture him in his lair.

As the God of Destruction, represented by a pick oddly enough, you will construct a dungeon that will carry over to the next stage. Along the way, monsters will be unleashed from the soil who will help to protect the Overlord. Sounds like a simple and easy game, doesn't it? As some of you may have already guessed, old school games may have sounded simple, but turned out to be extremely difficult. Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is no exception. When you start up the game, the first option available is Tutorial, and we HIGHLY advise new players to at least play through some of it. The tutorial may actually be longer than the game itself! Now this may sound like a bad thing, but the fact is the game has a fairly complex ecosystem mechanic.

One of the first monsters unleashed while digging are green Slimemosses. As they move around and bump into soil blocks, they gives nutrients to the blocks indicated by the color change. The brighter white a block gets, the more nutrients it has, allowing for bigger and badder monsters to be released. The monsters are also split into different tiers of hierarchy based on the amount of nutrients the block has, so the player has some idea what they are getting before breaking the soil block. Here's a quirk though: most, if not all the monsters can reproduce. The Slimosses, which are reproduced spontaneously by absorbing nutrients in the surrounding area, releases more of themselves after. Stronger monsters however, will need to consume a monster, typically the type that precedes it in the tier level in order to breed or evolve. Players will need to constantly keep a balance of their monsters, otherwise they may find themselves short on nutrients to releases more monsters. At the end of a stage, players are allowed to upgrade their monsters making them stronger and more powerful.

Apart from the ecosystem, there's also the tunneling mechanic. It doesn't take much strategy in the beginning to complete a level, but if you ever hope to beat the game, it takes a lot of learning and careful planning which can be frustrating. Some basic examples include keeping your tunnels narrow to prevent mages from wiping out multiple monsters, making many forks in your dungeon in order to split the heroes up, and constructing your dungeon to maximize the nutrient gain based on your monster's movement. Again, this is simply the tip of the iceberg, and the tutorial will do its job to teach you the basics. If you are still confused, NIS America has set up a strategy page online to teach players more advance tactics.

Probably the biggest fault we found with this game is that by failing a mission, you will have to restart the whole game from the first stage with a fresh dungeon. Luckily, we've played an import copy of the sequel and it has been properly addressed by adding three stage breaks where users can continue from those points. With that said, Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! What Did I do to Deserve This! is an excellent portable game and is currently only available to purchase from the PSN Store.

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