Dungeon Settlers

Introduction

Dungeon Settlers, developed by CanOpener and published by CanOpener and WhisperGames, entered Steam Early Access on 4 September 2026 at NZ$28.04. It's a colony sim built around a merciless dungeon: players lead a small party of expedition members onto barren land, providing them with food and shelter, before sending them deep into a randomly-generated dungeon to gather resources, fight monsters and push the story forward. Progress alternates between the relatively calm, resource- management side of settlement-building and tense, tactical dungeon combat where a party can be wounded, incapacitated or permanently lost. The game ships on Windows and macOS with no controller support. As a viral, week-old Early Access launch, it debuted with a large and clearly positive review base: 290 total reviews at the time of writing, 261 of them favourable, landing the game at Very Positive on Steam's own scale.

What's working: tense, tactical dungeon combat and real early-access polish

What comes through most clearly across Dungeon Settlers' review sample is how consistently reviewers credit its dungeon combat with real tactical depth, distinct from the more casual pace of its settlement-building side. One reviewer with over 30 hours logged sums up the loop directly: "Exploration is fun but tense. Required for resources so worth getting good at... Base building is simple but complex at the same time." A separate reviewer who finished the game's current content on Very Hard difficulty describes it in genre terms, calling it "like darkest dungeons from an isometric view and a lot less rng," crediting the design for rewarding "tactical skills" over relying on random chance to bail players out of a bad situation. Another reviewer frames the appeal in simpler terms, calling it "Rimworld Lite + Classic topdown fantasy Party RPG," and describing the result as "genuinely delightful, but still early in development."

The game's presentation and its unusually clean Early Access launch draw their own specific, repeated praise. One reviewer, self-described as disliking pixel art as a general rule, writes that the game still won them over: "If a pixel game (which I HATE) can draw me in, I consider the game to be very well done. The design, sound, mechanics, exploration, building, are all done very well... Also, no bugs so far, which is quite impressive for early access." A separate reviewer who played the pre-release Steam Next Fest demo confirms the finished Early Access release builds meaningfully on that foundation, writing simply, "keep at it devs! gj!" Beyond bug-free polish, reviewers who reached the current end of the game's content specifically praise its skill-tree and class variety, with one listing "blunt, spear, shield, bow, various magics" among the options for recruited adventurers and describing the resulting mix of colony building and RPG dungeon crawling as genuinely addicting.

The honest problems: an oversold comparison, a brutal default, and early balance issues

Set against that praise, Dungeon Settlers' review sample carries a specific and recurring pushback against how the game is being talked about, alongside real, concrete balance complaints. The most consistent theme is a direct challenge to the game's popular RimWorld comparison. One detailed reviewer with nearly 1,500 hours in RimWorld itself writes plainly that "it is in no way similar to RimWorld outside of the fact that its top down and you can build a base," while a separate, more critical reviewer goes further: "the 'colony sim' aspect is very light; it uses similar systems as rimworld but functionally is more like stardew valley... Am personally not a fan, was hoping for some more depth... but atm it's just not interesting." A third reviewer who does not recommend the game puts it most bluntly: "Got suckered in by the horde of reviews calling it Rimworld in a dungeon but man that's honestly an insult to Rimworld... The colony sim part is extremely shallow."

A second cluster of complaints centres on the game's difficulty, starting with its defaults. One reviewer reports that the "game auto starts on Hard, and its a real struggle," specifically recommending new players switch to Normal instead, though a separate reviewer counters that the difficulty options are clearly available and that players who "cannot read, or follow a tutorial" are the ones running into trouble. Beyond the default-difficulty confusion, a detailed, heavily-upvoted critical review lays out specific balance problems after finishing the game's current content on Very Hard: "Early game combat is a frantic kite, requiring you to dodge every attack... The fight becomes adequate when you get a healer in your group, but the healer stuff is unavailable in early game," and separately reports a lack of clear feedback when a party member becomes incapacitated mid-fight. A different reviewer reports a structural annoyance rather than a difficulty complaint: resources left unclaimed in the field simply decay and disappear with no storage option, writing that it "really ruins enjoyment in later game." More than one reviewer separately reports the early dungeon maps feel small and arena-like, with one writing they expected something "more open like Rimworld" and instead found "a tiny hollow slice," and another specifically flagging the current lack of custom character creation, limited to re-rolling randomly generated recruits, as a reason to wait before buying.

Verdict

Dungeon Settlers backs up a large, clearly positive viral Early Access launch with real tactical substance: reviewers consistently credit its dungeon combat with genuine tension and depth, its pixel art with real charm, and its launch state with an unusually clean, bug-free foundation for a week-old release. Its honest problems are just as specific: a popular RimWorld comparison that a meaningful share of reviewers, including some with deep RimWorld experience, argue oversells a comparatively shallow colony-management layer, a default difficulty setting that trips up new players before they realise it's adjustable, and concrete early-game balance and storage complaints from detailed, heavily-upvoted reviews. None of that undoes what a large, positive reception is clearly responding to in the dungeon-crawling core, but the difficulty and depth expectations are worth setting correctly before buying. This is a solid recommendation for tactical dungeon-crawler fans willing to accept a punishing early curve and a lighter colony-sim layer than the comparisons suggest.

Wanderer callout

A reviewer with nearly 1,500 hours in the specific game everyone keeps comparing this one to, stepping in to carefully explain exactly where the comparison holds up and where it doesn't, is exactly the kind of grounded, expert-adjacent evidence Wanderer treats as more valuable than a passing genre label: it corrects the hype with real, specific knowledge of both games.