Dungeons 4 was released on the Switch late last year and has been a staple in my household when it comes to co-op evilness. My wife and I spent hours playing together while she managed the dungeon and resources, leaving me to manage the war effort with our troops. It works really well, and despite us usually being delegated to being lawful good in video games, Dungeons 4 showed us it was good being evil. Not Another Multiverse flips this formula on its head by making us… good? What’s it like? Head to the surface, construct some buildings and be on your best behaviour as we review the Dungeons 4 DLC – Not Another Multiverse.
For those who haven’t seen my original review, or don’t know what it’s all about, Dungeons 4 is a Dungeon Management Real Time Strategy game that’s loads of fun filled with resource management, tower defence elements, and humorous 4th wall-breaking dialogue. It’s a refreshing approach to both RTS and Tower defence and never takes itself too seriously. The Switch port is quite good, despite some performance issues, it’s quite easy to have a great time in Dungeons 4, especially when playing co-op with a friend and it goes down as one of my favourite games on the platform.
Not Another Multiverse flips the game on its head by allowing you to play as Tristan, Thalia’s overbearingly good brother, and you will build bases above ground while teaming up with that no-good step-sister of yours to manage the dungeon. Your goal is to escape the multiverse in which you were dragged into where the monsters don’t want a dark elf to lead them, and they aren’t overly fond of Tristan either. Tristan and Thalia will reluctantly work together with the usual banter in order to survive.
Building and managing a fortress is great fun, with faction buildings like taverns and breweries to keep your troops happy, as well as defence towers to protect your base. You can build a smithy to upgrade your troops from standard to elites, and research into upgrading them further into legendary units, strengthening your army. This shift in gameplay style makes for an interesting strategy, and having to manage both above and below the ground offers unique challenges as well as opportunities. The good news is resources are shared, allowing you to focus on building mines above the ground while snots toil away below to boost your treasury, and you can send your evil army above the surface to defend your fortress, and your good army below to defend your dungeon heart. Not Another Multiverse does lock away a few evil factions, leaving you to manage just one, while Tristan gets his pick of elves, humans, and dwarves all in one.
Co-op delivers an outstanding experience in Not Another Multiverse, and while it doesn’t limit either player to either above or below the ground, my wife and I personally found sticking to one faction while she manages the other, leads to the best experience. The new content and faction adds so many layers of depth and strategy that we tackled the new Co-op mission “Sibling Rivalry” in many different ways. You can aim for a more balanced experience, sharing resources to build each army up, or you can use the “Good” faction to build turrets and defensive positions above ground, leaving a smaller force below to deal with spiders and Manavores. We ended up countering attacks with both armies towards the later stage of our skirmish, sending hordes of good and evil minions to defend our fortress above ground. Good communication meant we were able to advance through the tech tree quickly, capturing and expanding areas to build new gold mines to build a strong economy and keep the war machine turning. Not Another Multiverse is built for amazing co-op moments, so if you have a friend who is slightly more evil than you, you will be in for a deviously good time.
Graphically, Not Another Multiverse is more of the same Dungeons 4, although I did find spending a lot of my time above the surface was a welcome change. Maps are well-balanced and designed, and for the first time ever, it’s great to see the spread of good bring back the colour and greenery after conquering evil sections of the overworld. The good faction units are well-designed, and the buildings are interesting and easy to differentiate. The performance issues have been improved, but the game can still struggle with frames with a higher number of units on screen. It’s still playable, and for me, didn’t really take away from my experience. The game stability has also improved, only experiencing a crash once on a mission failure during Co-op mode, apart from that, my 5-6 hour Co-op experience was unhampered by technical issues, as well as my 6-7 hours with the new campaign missions. It leans a little more to the short side, but I found I got plenty of value out of it as I played a lot of the Co-op mode. My biggest complaint about Not Another Multiverse is that I just wished there was more of it, even if it was just a couple more skirmish maps to play.
For my evil (or good) gamers looking into accessibility options, there are several audio isolation options, including the ability to mute potentially upsetting sounds, UI scaling, the ability to hide certain UI aspects for a clearer view, adjust font size, camera movement speed settings, the ability to change the delay between command and attack inputs, and adjusting the autosave interval. It is worth noting that when above the surface, the cursor can be difficult to see as it is a smaller white reticle, and while below the surface can be dark and lower contrast, the surface is usually bright and much easier to discern. As always, I recommend further research to find out if Dungeons 4 suits your needs.
At just over $20 AUD, Not Another Multiverse flips Dungeons 4 (literally) upside down to offer a truly unique gameplay experience that allows you to be good for the first time in the series. It’s fun, frantic, and offers moments of genuine laughter with banter poking fun at other franchises, and heavily at itself. Despite it only having 3 main missions and 1 additional co-op mission, there’s plenty of gameplay and replayability here seeing how the other half lives. Like the greedy snots in my dungeon, I just want more! If you enjoyed Dungeons 4, Not Another Multiverse is an essential purchase, and while Dungeons 4 showed me it was good to be evil, it’s even better to be good.
So What’s it Like? Dungeons 4 Not another Multiverse is like Warcraft 3, crossed with Dungeons.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review code was provided by Kalypso Media, but this doesn’t influence my score.
