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Your torch is a beacon as you traverse through the dimly lit halls and tunnels, illuminating the horrific abominations that reside within this wretched land.
The cavernous depths yearn for your demise. You must enlist a team of flawed heroes to navigate the dungeons to eradicate the world from evil, even if it kills them.
Darkest Dungeon, developed by Red Hook Studios, invites players to experience a journey unlike any other. You will struggle with afflictions, be rewarded with invaluable treasures, whilst dealing with the mental abyss of the human mind. This is no place for the faint of heart.
Tread carefully, who knows what’s ahead.
Game Mechanics
Inside the shadowed corridors of this side-scrolling horror show, death creeps around every corner, evoking a sense of constant caution for what threats await you ahead.
Stress Management
Anxiety, grief, and suffering are your incessant companions. With each battle, interaction, and step slowly eating away at your sanity, you have no other choice but to try and not go crazy.
The stress metre climbs relentlessly, slowly developing deadly afflictions that can cripple your party’s effectiveness. Regulating stress levels comes with difficult decisions: do you push forward risking a mental breakdown, set up camp to entice calm, or return to safety at the Hamlet?
Party Enlistment
Creating a successful party is an art; it takes both skill and knowledge to make it out alive.
Heroes come in varying classes, skill sets, quirks, and even preferred positions when exploring dungeons. The front ranks being Crusaders or Lepers, they are the ‘tanks’ dealing substantial damage whilst maintaining high defence.
However, the back members such as Plague Doctors or Arbalests unleash status effects and ranged attacks, frequently inflicting damage over time (DoT).
Permadeath
Forget traditional respawning, because here, death is forever. When a hero falls, they're gone. Period.
As more of your party members die, the graveyard fills with names, leaving nothing but a growing list of the damned. With the stakes getting increasingly higher the more you continue, every decision matters.
Is it worth risking a life for a bundle of heirlooms, or do you preserve what remains of your roster?
Risk for Reward
Your torch is more than just a mere light; it’s a symbol of hope and security.
But if it wanes, you get engulfed by darkness, suddenly lowering the heroes’ accuracy and emboldening the bloodied monsters, giving them opportunities to strike first.
Yet, it’s during this time when the promise of reward is highest, tempting you with a plentiful bounty if you successfully clear the dungeon. The power is in your hands, so will you risk life for riches, or keep the torch lit?
Art Style and Atmosphere
Darkest Dungeon’s aesthetic evokes a sense of decay and antiquity, every frame displaying a grim scene, each with their own unique environment filled with horrors only to disgust you further.
The gothic, hand-drawn art style, made similar to that of mediaeval manuscripts, further solidifies the game’s character and setting into the genre of rogue-like gaming.
Not forgetting Wayne June, the man whose achievements are the keystone that perfectly ties Darkest Dungeon’s world together. His haunting narrations reverberate through the air, each phrase a stark reminder of your surroundings.
“Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer,” he warns, and for good reason. As you venture deeper in, you will be faced with unimaginable atrocities, from skeletal warriors, rotting crustaceans, to writhing flesh; Wayne's delivery on content never fails to amplify the dread felt within.
Dungeon Exploration and Bosses
You can never get too comfortable in Darkest Dungeon, for every dungeon crawl is a mysterious gamble. The procedurally generated maps constantly ensure no single playthrough is the same, so if you die, don't rely on remembering the layout, because it’s not going to be that easy!
Quests are unpredictable; they vary significantly in terms of monsters you'll encounter and the curios to interact with. From piles of rusted knives to inconspicuous crates, in the Warrens or Ruins, what happens when you touch these items, nobody knows. It's all or nothing.
Nowhere is this more important than in boss dungeons; there are 13 in total, each with their own strategies and loot. Suddenly, even the smallest decisions weigh more heavily than before.
Not only must you prepare a competent band of heroes capable of taking down monsters double their size, but also choose whether to risk disease and death from any interactables or enemies during your search for rewards. Because after all, you can’t afford to die before fighting the Hag or Swine King surely?
Victory against these monstrosities comes at a hefty price, but the riches, both financial and psychological, are worth the sacrifice. In Darkest Dungeon, survival is never promised. Heroes fall, the graveyard swells, but their stories aren’t forgotten, it’s all part of the plan.
“The Match Is Struck. A Blazing Star Is Born”
Amongst the decaying grounds of the Hamlet, where sanity becomes rare and valuable, you’re destined to navigate the damp, dark recesses that lie within. Darkest Dungeon isn’t merely a game; it’s a descent into chaotic madness that only death itself can solve.
As you face eldritch horrors, contract infections, and battle abominations that defy existence, just remember that to survive, one must make sacrifices. There is no reward in playing it safe.
Tread carefully upon entering these crypts, for nothing is guaranteed in this land.