Dungeon Keeper 2 is an IBM PC strategy game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1999[1] for Microsoft Windows. It was released in North America in June 1999 and in Europe over a year later in September 2000. It was the sequel to Peter Molyneux's Dungeon Keeper and predecessor to the cancelled Dungeon Keeper 3. Molyneux did not have an active role in the creation of the Dungeon Keeper 2, though many of his ideas lived on from the previous game. Like its predecessor, players take the role of a dungeon keeper, building and defending an underground dungeon from the would-be heroes that invade it, as well as from other keepers. In the game's campaign mode, the player is charged with recovering the portal gems from each area in order to open a portal to the surface. This was charged as a setup for the sequel, where the gems would be used to invade the surface world and defeat the faction of goodly heroes.

The most immediate change from Dungeon Keeper is in its graphics; the world is now fully 3D. Where monsters were previously sprites, they are now 3D models. Several rooms, spells, and monsters were changed, added or removed, as were many game mechanics. For example, if a creature is dropped into the middle of a melee, it is stunned and vulnerable for a few seconds before getting up to fight. One major feature of the game is its "My Pet Dungeon" mode, which features sandbox-style play where players have a nearly unlimited amount of time to construct a dungeon uninterrupted. Heroes would only invade the dungeon if the player chose to allow it.

The game plays quite similarly to its predecessor, however gameplay is more streamlined with less micromanaging and elimination of unnecessary information. Examples include the removal of the "kill enemies"/"beat them unconscious" switch [Creatures are always knocked unconscious, the behaviour can't be changed] and the creature statistics panel which provided all sorts of generally irrelevant information like blood type and luck. The creature combat experience was also moved to display as a circular 'progress bar' in the creatures 'health flower' over their heads removing the need to find the information in the panels. The colors, music and sound in Dungeon Keeper 2 also tends to be brighter and more vibrant, the original Dungeon Keeper was generally darker and 'grimier' with more serious overtones [granted Bullfrog had less room to manoeuvre technology-wise though]. Dungeon Keeper 2 tends to be much more tongue in cheek with various 4th wall violating jokes but is done well enough so that it doesn't seriously disrupt the player's immersion in the world.

Like the original, Dungeon Keeper 2 places the player in the role of a "malignant overlord" bent on world domination. The main story of the game is simple enough, the player must go and conquer all the underground lands in the kingdom to recover the 'portal gems' which can be used to open a portal to the surface world so that it can be invaded by evil, each individual level extends the main story with a specific substory for each region which in turn add more depth and detail to the main story. The kingdom itself takes the form of a large table containing a 3-Dimensional map where the player clicks where to attack next from the highlighted regions, this is quite similar to Dungeon Keeper's world map with mainly graphical improvements. There are 20 main levels in the campaign, some levels have multiple methods of attack allowing the player to choose which method and subregion they prefer.

As in the original, the player takes on the enigmatic form of a large floating green hand which moves around the map picking things up, dropping them, casting spells and interacting with specific items. The game interface is blended between a large panel at the bottom of the screen and interactive items in the world, for example, the buttons to select which room, door or trap to build or spell to cast are in tabs on the panel and are then dropped into position in the world, locking/unlocking doors or activating items is done by clicking on the item in the world, for example, disabling imprisonment of enemy creatures is done by clicking a metal bar next to the prison door barricading it closed.

Gameplay is overseen by "the Mentor" (an anonymous evil sounding male, voiced by Richard Ridings) just as in the original Dungeon Keeper who tutors the player in the early levels and provides hints and advice throughout the game as well as general notices such as "It's payday" or "Your dungeon heart is under attack!". The Mentor also provides a sometimes humorous monologue at the 'objectives screen' for each level about the level goals and the characters involved as well as pointing out the movements of rival keepers and the king on the world map.

After completing a campaign level the player receives a short movie before the debriefing screen which contains a joke based on the game, for example, a bile demon showing off to a couple of imps by hitting a training dummy behind him without looking, he is then distracted by a dark mistress and the maces on the training dummy's arms hit him in the head, knocking him out.

Other than the campaign, the game also includes multiplayer and skirmish modes as well as the sandbox mode, "My Pet Dungeon". My Pet Dungeon levels assign the player a goal such as "gain 10000 points" where points are gained by building, casting, claiming, slapping and just generally managing the dungeon. Once the player completes the objective they are then allowed to choose to keep playing on for as long as they like. The sandbox mode includes a 'Hero toolbox' where the player can grab Hero characters and drop them in their dungeon for their minions to kill, the toolbox also includes a slot machine like device for changing the skill level of the characters in the toolbox. The interface panel also gains a 'force an invasion' button that causes a team of heroes to emerge from a Hero gate and attack the player's dungeon.

The skirmish mode enables the player to fight against computer bots, however the difficulty of the bots is not particularly high as the AI tends to have limited decision making and contingency planning abilities but are still generally challenging under favourable conditions - specifically, a sufficiently large quantity of land to build perfectly square rooms and a large quantity of nearby gold or gems.