The root of all evil is indeed the middle management

The Dungeon Keeper series can feel like a relic from a bygone era. While titles like War for the Overworld and Evil Genius 2 have brought their spirit of evil middle management into the modern era, developer Realmforge Studios has combined aspects of underworld management sims and mixed them with real-time strategy elements for the fourth entry in its Dungeons series, which came out in November 2023 and is now available on Xbox Game Pass.

Dungeons 4 follows a campaign consisting of 20 missions that usually begin in your underground lair, as you assemble the necessary infrastructure to house your minions and defend against unwanted invaders. But once you've rooted yourself underground and amassed an army, you can head from above to loot resources, kill some would-be heroes, and generally engage in activities that would earn you more than a few points of bad karma, effectively shifting the game from a management sim to an RTS.

Gameplay in Dungeons 4 can feel similar to Dungeon Keeper as you wait for enemies to shuffle to your doorstep and fall into your clever traps. However, each map in Dungeons 4 is effectively two maps layered on top of each other, divided into the underworld and the overworld, which are linked by a series of portals that conveniently become choke points to attack or defend. This encourages you to adopt a more aggressive playstyle by locking key resources onto your enemies, and feels like a natural evolution of the command-heavy Keeper.