Developer: Red Hook Studios
Publisher: Red Hook Studios
Rrp: £18.99 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam)
Released: 19th January 2016
Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Approximate game length: 50+ hours
What was I searching for when I plumbed those depths? Glory, riches… power? All of it was for nought in the face of the sheer horror and madness that has now been unleashed upon this land. Our families fortune is spent and the land withers and the only thing I can leave you is the duty of cleansing my mistakes from this world, and for that I am sorry.
Darkest Dungeon was a Kickstarter success that I sadly missed out on. It’s a dungeon delving RPG, with roguelite elements and turn based combat. The basic premise of this game is that your families ancestral home has been invaded by dark and malevolent forces that exist beyond human understanding (essentially there is some Lovecraftian style horror occurring). Since you are far too important to actually go into the dungeons yourself you send in teams on missions. If any of those teams return then they get to rest up, recover stress and improve before you send them back out again.
You’ll spend most of this game controlling your heroes as they delve into the various dungeons on quests. However before you do that you have to provide your heroes with what they need to survive, the basics being food and torches. You’ll also be determining in what position your heroes should be deployed in as their positioning can and does make all the difference once in combat. As you travel through the dungeon the light of your torch diminishes. The darker things get the harder the game becomes but the rewards are greater. You can replenish the torch by utilising one from your inventory which consumes it, although many may have to be used bring your light levels to full.
The events of the dungeon can cause stress upon your heroes. This stress will eventually become an affliction which adds a behaviour characteristic to your hero. This can range from them bing a kleptomaniac (where they can randomly steal items) through to being fearful, that being said sometimes the high stress causes your hero to become even tougher though this isn’t a common occurrence.
There are ways of reducing your heroes stress while in a dungeon but most of those are specific to a heroes ability in while in combat (meaning you aren’t attacking the enemy but instead are managing your own parties stress) or are camping skills, which only occur on longer dungeon delves and also have to be carefully managed. Once you are in town you can treat your heroes stress level, along with other maladies. Some heroes will require a specific type of treatment such as visiting a brothel rather than praying, at least they will until you fix that as well although that can be quite costly.
As you wander a dungeon you will inevitably face opponents that you’ll have to defeat. Combat in this game is turn based with turn order being determined by the speed stat.
Enemy attacks do two types of damage, physical and stress. Physical damage has subtypes such as blight and bleeding that do damage over time. Stress attacks can be absolutely devastating, because if a hero becomes too stressed they’re resolve will become tested (as mentioned above) which can result in a good effect but will usually have a very negative one. These negative effects can and usually will, start to effect the rest of your party adding even more stress. If the stress bar becomes too full your hero will die of a heart attack.
When an enemy dies they often leave a corpse behind that fills the position they were in. These can be destroyed to force your opponents to change position. If however you find that these corpses are frustrating you can disable the function in the options menu.
Hero positioning is very important, depending on what skills your heroes have they will only be able to hit specific targets. Both you and your enemies can have attacks that will displace someone from one spot to another, hopefully making them less effective in combat.
Heroes that survive quests will gain experience which in turn will give them ‘resolve’ levels. The higher this level is the more likely they’ll pass tests of their resolve and not get negative effects.
This game uses two currencies, heirlooms and gold. Gold is used to upgrade your heroes equipment, buy trinkets, buy provisions, pay for de-stressing treatments and cure mental and physical afflictions. Hierlooms (of which there are four types) are used to upgrade the buildings within your hamlet this making more services available as well as improving on those that exist already.
I had a blast playing this game, but my god could it be frustrating at times. The art style and music are amazing and really add to the dark and dreary atmosphere. I found myself coming back to this game over and over. I’m even contemplating buying the DLCs.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Iratus Lord of the Dead
Slay the Spire
