It's been a full 27 years since “Dungeon Keeper” left its mark on the real-time strategy genre. What was new here was that we don't play the heroes who save the day, but rather the dark henchmen. The dark humor was remembered just as positively as the interesting gameplay mix of (almost peaceful) construction of an efficient dungeon and fights in which you use spells and traps in addition to a variety of minions.
The Munich developer Realmforge Studios used exactly this template to build today's “Dungeons” series. What began as a very minimally changed pseudo-reboot of the classic has now developed into a classic in its own right with the fourth part. The DNA of “Dungeon Keeper” is still clearly recognizable, but especially in the area of combat, “Dungeons 4” clearly stands out from the original thanks to large, supernatural battles. After the game was released digitally for PC and consoles towards the end of 2023, it is now also coming physically on Xbox S/X and Playstation 5. For this occasion, we have rescheduled the test on PC.
A normal day underground
Actually, it would be time for absolute evil and its servant Thalya to enjoy their well-deserved world domination. After all, they have almost eliminated the forces of good in “Dungeons 3”. Accordingly, “Dungeons 4” begins directly with the last victory campaign, where we devastate areas of land. Everything seems to be going well, because even if the last heroes slip through our fingers, we can enjoy the victory. At least until Thalya tries out the “Finitude” glove he captured and snaps his fingers. It promptly brings us, absolute evil, to our knees and takes over our rule. But only briefly, because the inexperienced dark elf is defeated and captured by the heroes 10 minutes later.
Now it's up to us once again to save the world from the saviors, free Thalya and finally ruin every area of land.
Like its predecessors, “Dungeons 4” makes an effort to hang the story on jokes and pop culture references like the Infinity Gauntlet. The plot itself is completely banal and only serves to make fun of well-known fantasy elements. But that's always the case with video games that really want to be funny. Here too, the shot generally backfires. With its dialogue, “Dungeons 4” is mostly reminiscent of “Borderlands 3”, in which it tries desperately to get a laugh from the player.
“Dungeons 4” fires the joke cannon so relentlessly and consistently that this possible negative point turns into a positive again. We only laughed at “Dungeons 4” and not with the game, but that's not a bad thing.
Rule together
In terms of gameplay, “Dungeons 4” didn't make any huge leaps compared to its direct predecessor; rather, it focused on existing strengths, expanded on them and rounded off some of the pitfalls of the gameplay.
The heart of the matter is still to build a dungeon in each of the 20 campaign missions, improve it with explored rooms and traps so that we can summon stronger and more dangerous monsters and then instill fear in the heroes in the overworld. If you proceed at a leisurely pace and take your time to prepare as best as possible for each battle, you will have a more relaxing building game than a hectic strategy game with a focus on combat, at least on the normal level of difficulty.
If dungeon management is too much for you, you can not only lower the level of difficulty, but also get support in the form of a co-op partner. The entire campaign, as well as the battles detached from it, can be played by two people, with both games building the same dungeon. There is no option for PvP. The game works well in cooperative mode, but especially in the earlier missions there is often not enough for two players to do and not enough units to command. Here the mode serves more to give a less experienced player a helping hand.