AI Dungeon Review (2026): Free Play, Pricey Memory

Most people open the game, type one wild sentence and laugh at the result. Then, forty turns later, the story forgets the name of their own sword. So this AI Dungeon review skipped the marketing and went through the official help center line by line.

The short version: you can play for free, with no ads, for as long as you like. However, the free tier holds only up to 4k of context, and the price of more climbs fast. Five tiers run from $0 to $99.99 a month.

Below, you will find how the game works, what each tier really buys, the safety settings, the Steam story and three alternatives.

What is AI Dungeon? It is an AI text adventure game from a studio called Latitude. The homepage calls it a text-based adventure-story game you direct and star in. Some people also search for it as dungeon ai, but the product is the same.

You write an action, and a language model writes what happens next. There is no fixed plot and no list of allowed commands. Because of that, a fantasy quest can turn into a courtroom drama in two turns.

The game has a long history for an AI product. According to its Wikipedia entry, Nick Walton built the first version at a hackathon in March 2019. Mobile apps followed in December 2019, and the game had 1.5 million players by June 2020.

By the end of this AI Dungeon review, one group stood out. The game suits people who want a story engine, not a companion. If you enjoy writing, world-building and tabletop games, the free tier gives you a real sandbox.

In contrast, it suits fans of one persistent character far less. There is no voice chat and no single partner who remembers you across stories. Readers who want that should look at the alternatives further down.

How does AI Dungeon work? The help center explains it in plain terms. A neural network reads the latest part of your story and predicts the text most likely to come next. Therefore, everything depends on two things: which model you pick and how much of the story it can see.

The testing behind this AI Dungeon review follows that logic, so the three blocks below cover play, models and memory.

First, pick a scenario. You can start a ready-made fantasy quest, load a community adventure or build your own. After that, each turn uses one of four modes.

• Do: your character performs an action.
• Say: your character speaks the line you type.
• Story: you narrate, and the AI follows your direction.
• See: the AI generates an image from your prompt.

In addition, Continue lets the AI write more without your input. Retry produces a new version of the last reply. Undo, Erase and Edit let you repair anything, including the AI text itself. The guide adds one useful tip: specific details get better answers than vague ones.

The official model page is long. In fact, it lists more than twenty active story models, and it publishes the context for each one by tier. Few rivals show that much detail.

First, free players get the small models. These include Dynamic Small, Muse, Wayfarer Small 2, Madness, Fable, Shimmer, Hearthfire and Harbinger. DeepSeek V4 Flash also appears on the free list, at 2K.

Then, paid tiers add the large ones. Journey opens Nova, Wayfarer Large, Equinox, Gemma 31B, GLM 5.3 Flash and DeepSeek V3.1. Legend adds DeepSeek V4.1, and Mythic adds GLM 5.3. Finally, DeepSeek V4 Pro has no included context below the Ultimate tier.

Context is how much text the model reads on each turn. For example, free play gets up to 4k tokens. Journey gets up to 8k, Legend 16k, and Mythic 32k.

However, those figures apply to the small models. On the large ones, the same model page shows half as much. For example, Nova and Wayfarer Large run at 4K on Journey and 8K on Legend. So a $14.99 plan with a large model sees no more text than free play with a small one.

Fortunately, the Memory System softens this. First, it writes a short memory every six actions and refreshes a story summary every 15 actions. The Memory Bank then stores 25 memories on the free tier and up to 800 on Ultimate. You can also add Story Cards for people and places.

Is AI Dungeon good? For freeform stories, yes. The small models write quickly, the tools for fixing a bad turn work well, and the community library is huge. What this AI Dungeon review kept coming back to is consistency. However, long stories drift, and the fix usually costs money.

The store ratings tell the same mixed story. For instance, the iOS app holds 4.4 stars from about 27K ratings. Meanwhile, the old Steam listing sits at Mixed, with 50% of 801 user reviews positive.

The AI Dungeon App on iOS, Android and the Web

The AI Dungeon app runs on iOS and Android, and the web version lives at play.aidungeon.com. The App Store lists it as free with in-app purchases, rated 13+, from Latitude Inc. Google Play showed an update on 9 October 2026, so the team clearly maintains it. Also, the help center suggests the website as a fallback whenever the app misbehaves.

Is AI Dungeon Down? How to Check

Outages happen, and people search for them often. Therefore, Latitude runs a live status page at status.latitude.io. A green dot means a system works normally, yellow means slow, and red means it has stopped. For more detail, the official Discord server answers faster than email. The help center also keeps a log of past incidents, including a note on slowness from December 2024.

Is AI Dungeon free? Yes. The free tier has a name, Wanderer, and the help center says it includes all basic features. The App Store page adds that free play carries no ads. Every price in this AI Dungeon review comes from the official Memberships and Benefits page, read on 13 October 2026.

You can pay month to month, or for 6 or 12 months at a discount. Journey and Legend include a one-week trial with purchase. Older plan names still show up in the app stores. Hero and Champion became Journey, and Latitude retired Adventurer for new buyers.

Credits pay for two things: AI images and temporary extra context on certain models. The App Store lists packs of 800 Credits for $9.99 and 1,700 Credits for $19.99. Above Ultimate sit the Shadow Tiers. They are web-only and monthly, and the help page itself admits the prices can feel uncomfortable.

What Are Scales for AI Dungeon?

Scales are a second in-game resource, separate from Credits. You collect them from daily rewards, or other players tip them to you. Free players spend Scales on Speed Boosts, which make free models up to 2x faster for 1 hour or 24 hours. You can also tip creators with them. Members already get faster speeds, so Speed Boosts do not apply to paid plans.

Two events explain most of the old headlines. First, in 2021 the company rushed out a content filter. By its own account, the filter produced many false positives and banned some players in error. Staff also reviewed stories by hand, and players saw that as an invasion of privacy. Latitude ended manual moderation in August 2021 and published an apology.

Since then, the company has changed its main AI provider and no longer depends on a single one. It also states that no human moderates unpublished content today.

AI Dungeon Steam: Is It Still There?

No. The second event is the Steam exit. The help center dates the paid Steam version to July 2022, at a one-time $30. It later became free to play, and Latitude retired the Steam app in early 2024. The Steam store page now says the game is no longer available there. Instead, everything the old Traveler tier offered now ships with free play by default.

Is AI Dungeon safe? For most adults, yes, with sensible habits. Latitude is a real company with a support address, a status page and a public help center. Payment runs through the app stores or the official site.

Privacy is better than the 2021 headlines suggest. The help center says the team does not read unpublished content. Staff see your text only when you ask support for help or send feedback. In addition, the Improve the AI setting, which shares story text for training, stays off by default.

Content Settings and Mature Stories

The AI Safety Setting has three levels: Safe, Moderate and Mature. They map loosely to PG, PG-13 and R, and new accounts start on Safe. The Mature level removes the limits on mature and violent themes, and you must confirm you are 18 or older to switch it on.

Published scenarios carry their own ratings: Everyone, Teen, Mature or Unrated. Search defaults to Teen. A short list of banned content stays blocked at every level, and system controls enforce it. Still, the App Store rates the app 13+, so parents should set the level themselves. The company has also disclosed past security incidents in 2021 and 2022 on its own FAQ.

SpicyChat swaps the open story for community characters. You pick a persona and chat with it, so the experience feels more like a conversation than a campaign. It also has a free tier.

Choose it if you care more about one character than about a world. Our full SpicyChat review covers the free limits in detail.

CrushOn AI also builds on character chat, and it leans further into unfiltered roleplay. A free tier lets you test it before paying.

It suits readers who found the Mature setting here still too careful. However, it offers no scenario engine or Story Cards. See the CrushOn AI review for the plan breakdown.

Candy AI sits at the premium end. Instead of a text adventure, it sells one polished companion with voice, images and long-term memory.

It costs money from the start, and that is the trade. If you wanted a partner and not a dungeon master, this is the closer fit. Our Candy AI review lists current pricing.

Pros

• Free Wanderer tier with no ads and all basic features
• Context for every model and tier sits on a public help page
• Strong story tools: Story Cards, Memory Bank, Retry, Undo and Edit
• Three safety levels, with Safe as the default for new accounts
• The team states it does not read unpublished stories

Cons

• Free play tops out at 4k context, so long stories drift
• Large models on the $14.99 Journey plan get only 4K of context
• Top tiers cost $49.99 and $99.99 a month, with Shadow Tiers above them
• No longer on Steam, where the old listing holds a Mixed score
• Two currencies, Credits and Scales, make the costs harder to follow

The free tier earns its reputation. No other big name gives you an ad-free story sandbox with this many tools and asks for nothing. For casual play, you may never need a plan.

The paid ladder is harder to recommend. Journey doubles context on small models only. As a result, Legend at $29.99 is the first tier where the large models get real room. That is a lot for a text game.

So here is the short answer from this AI Dungeon review. Start free. Learn Story Cards before you pay for memory. Then upgrade only when a story you love keeps losing its own thread. In the end, the model writes the sentences, but you still have to remember the plot.

If you want something a little naughtier, our No Filter Freedom collection ranks the most permissive roleplay platforms. For direct swaps, the AI Dungeon alternatives collection compares the closest text adventure rivals.

Meanwhile, the best AI chatbot for roleplay guide covers every major platform on price and memory. Tinkerers may also like our SillyTavern review, which looks at a free, self-hosted front end.