Dungeons 4

Dungeons 4 puts you in charge of an underground lair full of monstrous minions, tasking you with excavating rooms, defending against invading heroes, and eventually striking back at the overworld above. It's the fourth entry in Realmforge Studios' long-running, Dungeon Keeper-inspired comedy strategy series, and reviewers most invested in that lineage describe it as the format's most accomplished version yet — even as others argue it hasn't moved the format forward enough to justify its price.

The series' most polished entry, according to its biggest fans

Reviewers with deep history in the Dungeons series consistently praise this entry as the culmination of over a decade of iterative refinement, describing it as looking great, running smoothly, and offering more depth and scale than any prior game in the franchise. Co-op specifically draws strong, detailed praise, with reviewers describing a meaningfully expanded experience over Dungeons 3's co-op offering — one player managing the underground dungeon while a partner leads overworld invasions, with enough scale and content that neither role runs out of things to do across a full campaign.

A widely repeated "more of the same" complaint

Set against that praise, the single most consistent criticism concerns how little Dungeons 4 changes from its immediate predecessor. Multiple reviewers describe near-identical troops, buildings, and overall systems, arguing the game feels like a large, well-produced content pack for Dungeons 3 rather than a genuine sequel — a complaint sharpened by the fact that additional new content has since arrived as paid DLC rather than being included at launch. Some reviewers go further, describing specific systems as changed for the worse: the previous game's system of assigning specific units to specific rooms was replaced by a more generalized "snot" mechanic that several reviewers say removes a layer of strategic variety they valued in Dungeons 3.

A genuine, unaddressed EULA controversy

This review's research confirms a specific, well-documented controversy distinct from any gameplay complaint: shortly after launch, players reported being required to accept an updated end-user license agreement mid-playthrough in order to continue playing, disclosing that personal data would be collected and shared with third parties, without the notice linking to the actual privacy policy in question. Reviewers also noted the agreement was presented only in English and German despite the game supporting numerous other languages. This review's research across the sampled patch and announcement history found no confirmed developer response directly addressing this specific complaint — a notable gap given how prominently it features among the game's most-upvoted negative reviews.

What the achievement data shows

Global achievement data, with fully human-readable mission names, shows a relatively gradual decline consistent with a story-driven campaign rather than a steep difficulty wall: 88.1% of the playerbase completes the opening mission, falling gradually through the mid-campaign (71.9% for the third main story beat, 59.0% for the sixth) down to 14.4% for what appears to be the campaign's final mission. That's a real but steady drop-off, suggesting the game retains a meaningful share of its audience through much of the story rather than losing most players early.

Sustained content support, but as paid DLC

This review's research confirms Dungeons 4 has received genuinely sustained post-launch investment: four paid DLC expansions released across 2024 and 2025 — Not Another Multiverse, The Good, the Bad and the Evil, Tales from the Campfire, and Double Trouble — alongside a steady cadence of free numbered updates and a Nintendo Switch port. That's real, ongoing commitment to the game well beyond launch, though it doesn't directly answer reviewers who specifically wanted more new content included in the base game itself rather than sold separately afterward.

A dark comedy tone that still lands, according to critics of everything else

Even reviewers most critical of the game's incremental design and the EULA controversy tend to carve out an exception for its writing and tone. The series' irreverent, self-aware dark comedy — narrated by a sardonic "Absolute Evil" overlord commenting on the player's actions — draws consistent praise as one of the few elements universally regarded as well executed regardless of a given reviewer's overall verdict, suggesting the writing team's work has aged well across four entries even where the underlying systems have drawn more mixed reactions.

Steam Awards recognition for sustained support

Reflecting the DLC and update cadence documented above, Dungeons 4 received a "Labor of Love" Steam Awards nomination roughly two years after its original release — a category specifically recognizing games that continue receiving substantial post-launch investment well beyond what a typical release schedule requires. That's an external, third-party form of recognition for the same pattern of sustained content support this review's research independently confirmed through the game's DLC and patch history, rather than a claim resting on the developer's own self-description alone.

Where the newcomer experience differs from the veteran one

It's worth separating two distinct audiences reflected in the review base. Reviewers coming to the Dungeons series for the first time, without the comparison point of Dungeons 3 fresh in mind, consistently describe a satisfying, well-realized hybrid of dungeon management and real-time strategy invasion, unencumbered by any sense of repetition. The "more of the same" complaint discussed above is specifically a veteran's complaint, voiced almost exclusively by reviewers who'd sunk significant hours into the previous game — worth keeping in mind when weighing how much that particular criticism should factor into a first-time buyer's decision versus an existing fan's.

Where it lands

Dungeons 4 earns its Very Positive reception through genuine mechanical polish and a co-op experience series veterans describe as the format's best yet, but its reception is meaningfully tempered by a widely shared sense that it doesn't advance far enough beyond Dungeons 3 to justify a full-price sequel, and by a specific, unaddressed EULA controversy this review's research could not find any developer response to. For existing series fans, this remains a worthwhile, well-crafted pickup — ideally at a discount, and with the EULA situation understood going in.