Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Descend at your peril!
Uncompromising, unforgiving, and unconventional, we present a fresh take on the dungeon crawler that elevates the importance of sound tactics and a character's mental state over their gear.
You will recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes through twisted forests, forgotten warrens, ruined crypts and beyond. You'll battle not only unimaginable foes, but stress, famine, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark. Uncover strange mysteries, and pit the heroes against an array of fearsome monsters with an innovative strategic turn-based combat system.
You will have to tend to characters’ spirits as much as you do to their Hit Points. But in these grim situations, you'll find opportunities for true heroism!
Darkest Dungeon is not a game where every hero wins the day with shiny armor and a smile. It is a game about hard trade-offs, nearly certain demise, and heroic reversals.
Do you have what it takes to survive in the forgotten corners of the Darkest Dungeon?
Darkest Dungeon reached its funding goal early in the campaign. There are stretch goals available on the Kickstarter page, which have been being tackled at a slow but steady pace. As the campaign reaches its ending point, it's time for every interested person to pitch in
I find the artwork incredibly appealing. Drinking from a Lovecraftian inspiration, this game is a very interesting twist to the dungeon crawler, adding the party management side and the innovative psychological system, along with some unique take on traditional class archetypes and brand new ideas. Your heroes can go haywire and wreak havoc among the party!
The soundtrack is being composed by Stuart Chatwood, composer for eight Prince of Persia games beginning with "The Sands of Time", while also being part of a platinum-selling Canadian rock band (The Tea Party). There are samples available at the Kickstarter page, and I have to say they look pretty awesome.
The creators are very active in comments and interact with backers on a daily basis. They also livestream, on Twitch, various events such as art drawing and brainstorming sessions.
Afflicted party members will act out in a variety of ways that impact the play experience during combat, exploration, camping, and even in town. Like weary soldiers who have seen too much, your heroes will develop permanent quirks and emotional baggage based on their experiences.
-The Jester has seen one too many party members die in combat, and is prone to nihilistic rants, stressing the other party members! Do you send him carousing in town to blow off some steam? -The Man-at-Arms has begun relying on the bottle as much as his battleaxe. His inebriated fury is a welcome damage boost for the party, but he has grown increasingly unpredictable and erratic. Do you bench him in town, or simply lash more liquor to his pack? -At camp, the Plague Doctor's methods unnerve the Highwayman, and he refuses her treatments. Maybe you should rethink the idea of combining them in the same party again. -A critical hit from a skeleton sends the Vestal reeling, and instills in her a crippling fear of the Undead. She can fight well enough against other foes, but if you expect her to keep her head through the Crypts, you'll first need to send her to the Abbey to do some serious prayer and contemplation.
I'm somewhat shocked this hasn't gotten more attention or any replies.
So the game releases on steam on tuesday! Been watching it like a man possessed this weekend, and I can't wait. Between the gorgeous gothic art style, the morose mood and the high level of difficulty, it seems this game is a perfect shoe-in for me.
Unfortunately I've not backed this and thus haven't got a key, but there's a bunch of giveaways being given out on various streams with irregular intervals, so if you've ever had luck with lotteries, you might have a chance. Team Main Menu on Twitch's doing a 100 hours of Darkest Dungeons event to celebrate the release - even if you're not wanting to win, it's a great way to get a basic feel of the game.
Most appealing bits for me? Sure, the tactical combat is nice, and the positioning / skill target system is neat, but I'm loving the stress/psychological aspect of the thing, with your characters getting fell traits of good and bad. It definately focuses on the psychological exhaustion of your dear expendable adventurers, giving it a very Lovecraftian vibe.
Yeah I just found out about this and had been watching streams of it this weekend. Not sure. I like the art, has some interesting and cool features and mechanics, but... it looks too easy and not very rogue-like or unforgiving which makes me think it might just end up being gimmicky. Some forum posts pretty much confirm my fears, and the community seems hell bent on petitioning the devs to make it even easier, allowing high level characters to level up low level ones/ allow them to leech xp... which would essentially trivialize the game I would think. I just don't understand this generation of gamers sometimes, time to find a new hobby maybe lol.
I have been watching a lot of streaming. Game seems fun enough however it shouldn't last anywhere near the same amount of hours as other roguelikes. There is a decent amount of depth but it seems too easy right now. It's going to be "fully released" in the summer so it might be worth waiting and watching the development.
Yeah, I can't believe people who complain about "high level characters unable to grind low level dungeons" or "provisions not carrying over the next mission". I'll keep cursory watch on this, but if the developer decides to compromise on the difficulty it's not going to be enough to retain my interest.
I've watched a few streams but the stress bar seems a little confusing to me
When a character hits full stress they have a chance of receiving a negative affliction, but then once you receive said negative affliction there seems to be no incentive to worry about the stress meter anymore I haven't seen anyone receive two stress afflictions.
So a lot of the players I've seen are just running through dungeons with full stress and no reason to deal with it. I was kind of hoping you'd really get that feeling of your characters shitting their pants and if all four heroes have full stress then you're pretty fucked. I don't feel that at all
On February 03 2015 17:10 ShloobeR wrote: I've watched a few streams but the stress bar seems a little confusing to me
When a character hits full stress they have a chance of receiving a negative affliction, but then once you receive said negative affliction there seems to be no incentive to worry about the stress meter anymore I haven't seen anyone receive two stress afflictions.
So a lot of the players I've seen are just running through dungeons with full stress and no reason to deal with it. I was kind of hoping you'd really get that feeling of your characters shitting their pants and if all four heroes have full stress then you're pretty fucked. I don't feel that at all
am I missing something?
No clue. I thought in addition to getting a permanent potential disability, they'd get an acute effect as well, such as the masochism where they keep stabbing themselves and so on. I dunno.
Anyhow, for it being too easy and it not having long life - this is what I worry about, too. Hopefully, they'll add a hard mode at some point.
On February 03 2015 17:10 ShloobeR wrote: I've watched a few streams but the stress bar seems a little confusing to me
When a character hits full stress they have a chance of receiving a negative affliction, but then once you receive said negative affliction there seems to be no incentive to worry about the stress meter anymore I haven't seen anyone receive two stress afflictions.
So a lot of the players I've seen are just running through dungeons with full stress and no reason to deal with it. I was kind of hoping you'd really get that feeling of your characters shitting their pants and if all four heroes have full stress then you're pretty fucked. I don't feel that at all
am I missing something?
I'd say yes and no. Once the stress bar fills up for the first time in a dungeon, you don't get additional afflictions if it comes back down and back to full again. But those afflictions seem pretty rough (characters passing turns, wasting heals/buffs). Maybe you carry them to the following dungeon? If they stacked it would make a character unplayable.
Seeing as how the game is hard enough without stress induced penalties, it seems fair to me. I'm fine with the "optional health bar" treatment stress gets.
So, one evening of playing so far. What do you other kids feel?
Personally, I'm loving the mood, although the combat, so far, is pretty easy. As long as I'm keeping my torch topped off, stress is not really an issue unless I get RNG'd to the face, which so far (over 10 or so adventures) has happened once or twice. Im thinking it might get more worrisome as I progress, but so far, it's been mostly a cakewalk, with one death.
Been watching some streams, and I keep hearing a ton of whining about difficulty being too high, which goes contrary to my experience. I'm thusly terrified that this game'll get nerfed even more, which would trivialize things to the level of boredom.
I'm hoping they'll add a 'hard-mode' or something similar at some point.
My experience sounds like it matches yours. Not sure what all the whining is about as far as difficulty, but maybe I'm not far enough into it yet? Love the art and atmosphere, mechanics etc, but seems easier than I expected- thought the early game would be tough from what I had been reading/complaints etc. I haven't had anyone die and completed everything 100%- no retreats etc so far. Maybe it is because I had watched streams all weekend and knew what to expect. Really cool game, just afraid the devs will make it even easier to appease their backers. Would like a harder difficulty setting as well.
Hm, hm, hm. This game is kinda hard. So hard that you have to break it, then it becomes a tedious grind of healing away ~4 moral out of 100 a turn while keeping a low mob stunned, or ignoring 2/3 of the game mechanics and running threw the darkness with four maniacs. If they don't fix these holes it kinda becomes a bad game.
Awesome art style, dense atmosphere. I wish there were armor and weapons to find besides trinkets. I am also curious what they have planned for end game and what the max level is going to be.
I plan to buy this game and play it over the weekend
but I've been watching a few more streamers recently and they often whittle the last mob down to low HP and then spend a bunch of time just healing/buffing characters for free. Also darkness doesn't seem quite as punishing as I'd hope.
but for all my concerns this game looks pretty cool and I love the atmosphere. I hope they kick up the content a little bit, more (wearable) items and such.
This game is amazing, definitely one of the better early access games out there. So many games coming out so broken/unplayable lately and this one seems almost like a finished product already. Music is amazing, gameplay as well. The price they are charging for it is so cheap for how well it delivers.
Great game so far, and I agree that once you figure out a few things the difficulty drops significantly. Basically doing the handful of things that ensure your stress damage doesn't get out of control, which is usually (outside of RNGesus) what causes things to spiral. While I hope for a harder difficulty level, remember you can do that yourself by just not running around with radiant light all the time. Run without torches, or with less torches, and watch the game get harder and reward you with more loot.
This game is one of the most complete early access games I have ever played, but it is definitely still early access. The UI could use a lot of improvement (tooltips are unfinished, the turn order is not apparent, random UI quirks that are frustrating) and it would be nice if in town the type of upgrades you are able to purchase with your materials is more apparent.
By far the strongest aspect of this game is the atmosphere. The music, sound effects, voice acting, and art style are top notch, and really impressive for an indie studio. I haven't historically been into Lovecraftian-type settings, but Darkest Dungeon immediately drew me in and has me wanting more. It's unusual for an early access game to have these things in the game already with such quality, but there you go. And it says a lot that it is the strongest aspect of the game and the combat and strategy aspects are still quite excellent.
Oh, and another thing is that it feels like you wait a little too much. If you can think quickly or don't want to think about your strategy, you should really be able to do combat rapid fire. But waiting for bleeds, blights, your crazy characters to speak, or for the narrator to talk gets old rather quickly.
If you asked my opinion 30 minutes after launching this game, I'd tell you it's incredible and a definite must buy. Couple more hours in, I'd say wait for a sale. It's a decent game, but it sounds much better on paper than it is in reality. Many things that you might think are key mechanics based on the games' description are really just minor touches that have very little if any impact (like food for example you just buy a stack of before every mission and never really need to think about it, or diseases are merely some random debuffs that you could get if you are unlucky with a random roll here and there). Also at least in its current version it is very grindy, you end up repeating a lot of samey dungeons with same few kinds of monsters in them and leveling is rather slow to start with, then on top of that you essentially need to level 3-4 parties of heroes due to resting them or removing their debuffs etc.
The game lacks some urgency in general; the best approach is to just play it safe at every turn, to the point of abusing the whole stun one mob while healing as someone mentioned above. Even if you purposefully avoid those kind of gamey mechanics, the surest way to succeed is to keep grinding lower level dungeons while getting rid of negative traits on your stronger chars, farm gold to get all the upgrades and move very slowly, which gets pretty boring as the variety of monsters / environments / item drops is very limited.
All in all not a bad game, but gets pretty boring rather quickly (at least in my opinion), and it just fails to deliver on many points which could have been enough to make this game absolutely amazing rather than simply okay.
I have been watching a lot of streamers play this (because I am broke af and can't get it myself ^^), it is actually pretty fun to watch. I have to echo what people have said though about the 'difficulty'; watching streamers who sort of self-impose a bit more difficulty by running interesting comps or doing like low-light runs etc is more fun that watching ones who just run stun heals/jester stress relief etc and cruise through everything. From watching streams I am fairly impressed with the game overall especially as it is early access. I would like to play it but hopefully it will get better (and cheaper) with some time :D. I suggest watching some streams if you are interested in the game, as it is pretty fun just to watch.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zGvHRah.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2i82u7u.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ShRuGdO.jpg)
