Dungeons 4 Headed to Nintendo Switch on October 17th!

Bracknell, UK - 30th September, 2024 - Publisher Kalypso Media and developer Realmforge Studios have announced a new way to play the fan-favourite dungeon management simulator Dungeons 4, with the official Dungeons 4 – Nintendo Switch Edition arriving to the Overworld October 17th.

The Tech-Savvy Evil has been hard at work, developing a way to compress raw evilness into its purest, most concentrated form ever. And it has made a breakthrough! Dungeons 4 – Nintendo Switch Edition, using an ingenious new formula, allows the Nintendo Switch system to simulate an EPI (evils-per-inch) level 666 times beyond what was previously thought possible.

Dungeons 4 – Nintendo Switch Edition unleashes darkness upon the Overworld as the Dark Elf Thalya seeks to conquer the forces of good once and for all with the help of The Absolute Evil and his compact minions. While Thalya rallies her Snots to her Evil cause, the do-gooders of the world led by Thalya’s abhorrently holy half-brother Tristan, welcome the stalwart Dwarves to their cause to prevent the destruction of the flourishing Overworld.

This edition will contain extra content, not available with any other edition, such as Thalya’s Princess outfit and a fashionable new look for the Little Snots and the throne room. Content from the Digital Deluxe Edition of Dungeons 4 can also be found in the Nintendo Switch edition, including: the iconic ‘Storming of Dollaran’ map from Dungeons 3, the official soundtrack, the digital artbook, and a special skin for the Absolute-Evil’s-Slapping-Hand™.

Dungeons 4 - Nintendo Switch Edition will emerge from the darkness on October 17th and is available for pre-order on September 30th with a 10% pre-order discount. The first DLC for Dungeons 4, titled “The Good, the Bad and the Evil” will also launch on Nintendo Switch on October 17th, with a 10% launch discount until October 24th.

Features:

Follow the Evil Way: Dungeons 4 – Nintendo Switch™ Edition features 20 fully-voiced (toss a coin to your Narrator) and deliciously evil missions, and several skirmish maps for those seeking a challenge.

Change the world: Set up your evil home base on vast Underworld maps and prepare to spread your Evilness across the huge Overworld, turning the lush environments over to the dark side.

Everything is better with Dwarves™: the Dwarves have arrived to build their underground strongholds as the hardy fellows compete with the Ever-Expanding Evil for space and resources.

The Multi-Faceted Evil: Thalya’s perk system places impressive new powers in her impatient hands.

Work together, slay together: 2-player co-op multiplayer with both players managing one Dungeon together. All maps from the skirmish mode and the campaign are playable in co-op.

Extra Evil: The Dungeons 4 – Nintendo Switch Edition comes with an exclusive “Princess” outfit for Thalya, new skins for the Little Snots and your throne room, as well as the ‘deluxe package’ including the ‘Storming of Dollaran’ map, skins for Thalya and the Evil Hand, the official soundtrack and the digital artbook.

About Kalypso Media:

Kalypso Media Group GmbH is an independent publisher, developer, and marketer of interactive entertainment software with over 200 employees at 10 locations across Germany, England, France, Japan, and the USA. The Kalypso Media Group includes Kasedo Games, the digital label of Kalypso Media Group, along with four development studios: Realmforge Studios (Dungeons series), Gaming Minds Studios (Railway Empire, Port Royale, Tropico 7), Claymore Game Studios (upcoming: Commandos Origins).

Specializing in the development of strategy and simulation games for a global audience on multi-platforms, Kalypso Media Group's IP portfolio includes full rights to the Tropico series, Commandos, Port Royale, Dungeons, Sudden Strike, and Railway Empire, among others. Kalypso Media's most recent releases are Railway Empire 2, Dungeons 4, The Inquisitor and the upcoming Commandos: Origins (2024). Recent releases from Kasedo Games include IXION (PC) and Recipe for Disaster (PC) and the upcoming Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus II. Find out more at www.kalypsomedia.com.

Nintendo Switch is a trademark of Nintendo. 

Article by: Susan N.

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Spacebase Startopia - PS5 Review

Spacebase Startopia by developer Realmforge Studios and publisher Kalypso Media—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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On its surface, Spacebase Startopia should be a lot of fun. It has a quirky sense of humor, falls into the strategy / sim genre that I enjoy so much and the science fiction setting give the developers all of the flexibility in the world (or perhaps space, as it were) to be creative. However, I can’t help but come away with the feeling that this has all been done better in other games.

The introductory movie had me grinning. That kind of slapstick humor is going to be hit and miss with people, but this is the same development team that brought us the three Dungeons games. They have a somewhat dark sense of humor, and I generally appreciated it here – though I thought it was generally better done in Dungeons I,II and III.

You want to play the tutorial once things get fired up – because there is a lot here. This is a pretty complex simulation game, and it does feel as though it was built with PC in mind and then ported to a variety of consoles. This is something I often am a proponent of – I want to see more strategy titles brought over to consoles as that is my preferred platform, but I will admit that the controls were a bit finicky for me at times. Menus are dense, sometimes you need to use two buttons to bounce around them effectively and moving around the screen with the left stick sometimes does zooming in and out instead of actually panning about, making the camera a sometimes annoying enemy to wrestle with.

That is a shame too, because I enjoyed the visuals of Spacebase Startopia quite a bit. They’re bright and colorful, with lots of little aliens bopping around my three floored station. That being said, the view is restricted to just the three floors and there’s no real sense of growth to the station itself. There’s a satisfying feeling that comes with watching a province grow in strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or watching your dungeon in Dungeons III expand as you carve out more passages and rooms. I get that space stations probably can’t ‘grow’ quite so easily, but there is a sense of confinement to how the playing field is structured that just made Spacebase Startopia a little less satisfying by comparison.

To its credit, the three different levels in Spacebase Startopia each serve a different purpose, and the resource management / inhabitant happiness / expansion tug-of-war is a pretty well-balanced one most of the time. You use energy to create buildings, you have bots and aliens performing various tasks along the way and you have to try and find that sweet spot between productivity and happiness with a bit of RTS combat tossed in for good measure. When all of its parts are working in harmony, Spacebase Startopia is a pretty entertaining little sim.

The biggest issue outside of the somewhat clumsy control / UI is that the AI tends to be a bit unpredictable. There were times I would give my units commands and they just sort of sat there trying to decide if I was actually in charge of them or not. That happiness / working balance is a bit tough to find too. There were many times I felt I had a building staffed properly, but it felt as though my workers were spending 2/3 of their time relaxing instead of actually doing thigs. This forced me to overstaff my structures in order to keep them functioning, which in turn throws off the overall balance.

Campaign / mission structure’s often well-done, with a sort of competitiveness in its objectives that help to keep things fresh and not simply ‘building things up for the sake of building things up’. The mission structure combined with the quirky humor had me entertained more often than not, even when grappling with overly lazy workers or fickle camera angles. The music and sound effects match the bright visual aesthetic well enough, creating a pleasant overall aesthetic.

Summary

Spacebase Startopia is a fairly standard strategy/simulation game at its core, with the balancing of resources, happiness and a bit of light RTS combat mixed in. Some technical concerns around the camera, balky control scheme and less-than-stellar AI diminish the overall experience, however. There is plenty of micromanaging fun to be had here for fans of the genre, but Spacebase Startopia is not among the best in the genre either.

Score: 7 / 10

 

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