Dark Quest 4 review: Dread-inducing chickens

Fans of tabletop roleplaying games, you’re in for a treat. Dark Quest 4 is a stylish, turn-based dungeon crawler with heavy TTRPG flair, placing you in the shoes of a party leader as you storm through a series of fantastical quests.

Below, you’ll find The Escapist’s full review of this title, looking at everything from the core gameplay and replay value to the hero roster and overall performance. This review was completed in the single-player mode, but I’ll touch on the other modes on offer briefly. 

The Escapist recaps

• Dark Quest 4 is a turn-based dungeon crawler that feels like a cozy night playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends. I’m not sure if the cozy game energy was deliberate, but it felt whimsical all the same. 
• Developed and published by Brain Seal Ltd., Dark Quest 4 was released on November 4, 2025, following up Dark Quest 3 from 2023.
• The main goal in Dark Quest 4 is to work your way through quests with a roster of heroes, tackling enemies and navigating traps while picking up treasure. Each hero on offer has a strikingly different playstyle, ranging from a fire mage to a prince.
• The game felt enjoyable and vibrant to play through, with a decent chunk of quests on offer for the single-player campaign, aside from occasional clunkiness with the controls.
• Two other modes were available – multiplayer and creator. The creator mode allowed for full map creation, and I was impressed with the variety of tools available. 

Cozy, candlelit carnage

Dark Quest 4 kicks off with a delightful storybook cinematic, setting up the game’s lore. It’s the narrative you might expect from a fantasy title, but I still found it intriguing to learn about the evil sorcerer’s right-hand demon, Gulak, and the creatures of the night that I’d be facing off against.

The game is a tabletop RPG-inspired dungeon crawler, which is set up to look like you’re actually playing a TTRPG – think miniature figures, a tile-based board, and a cozy atmosphere. As a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, I found the visuals to be delightful.

There are 10 heroes to build a party from in total, although not all of them are available from the get-go. Each ranges in strength and attack style, varying from a fire mage and a wizard to a drunken dwarf and a knight, and they can all be enhanced with new abilities and items from the vendors and trainers at camp.

Once you’ve played through the introductory dungeon, you’ll be able to start running through the main campaign, completing quests, and developing your band of heroes. Each dungeon has a different focus – one might be trap-centered and the other might revolve around a boss, for example.

Combat is simple but fun, with a set number of tiles for each character to move per turn and cards that indicate an action. It’s standard turn-based fantasy fare, but it gets more complex as you gain access to new abilities and late-game dungeons. 

Something I particularly enjoyed about Dark Quest 4 was the variety of enemies on offer. There were undead constructs, skeletal archers, and – worst of all – particularly annoying chickens that exploded upon death.

Walking into a room of those was genuinely shudder-inducing; I lost party members to these foul-feathered fowls more times than I care to admit. 

Engaging dungeon-crawling action 

The gameplay loop in Dark Quest 4 was satisfying to run through, even when I ended up dying and having to repeat a dungeon. 

There’s a fatigue system in place with this game, which deters you from using the same heroes over and over, marking down their health until they’ve had time to rest and bumping up the stats of heroes that you haven’t taken out for a while. This encouraged me to keep trying new builds, particularly if I got stuck.

Performance-wise, Dark Quest 4 was a gem. I didn’t encounter any noticeable glitches, quirks, or bugs while reviewing and found the user experience to be positive overall, with an approachable style of play. 

The only small issue I’d raise is that the controls could be clunky in places. I found selecting doors to go through in a dungeon to be fiddly at times, and the process of equipping items for different heroes was somewhat unintuitive at first. These didn’t greatly impact my time with the game, though.

Alongside the single–player experience, the game offers a multiplayer mode and a map creator. I completed my review in the single-player mode, but tested the map creator out and found the tools on offer to be comprehensive yet decently approachable. 

Dark Quest 4 was a lively, immersive experience, with a style of play that kept me coming back for more. If you’re a fan of turn-based action, TTRPGs, and fantasy games, you’ll get a kick out of this title. It’s got a rich single-player mode, an in-depth map builder to help you make your own levels, and a multiplayer mode as well.

Ask The Escapist