Darkest Dungeon: "Ruin has come to our Family"

Darkest Dungeon, a game developed by Red Hook Studios, is a 2D, turn-based dungeon crawler with RPG elements where you play the role of the heir of the family estate that has fallen into disrepair and along with a pair of mercenaries journey to bring order back to it and the surrounding lands.

One of the strongest aspects of the game is the voice work of the character known as The Ancestor and is played by Wayne June.

I bring this first to not overstate how impactful the voice work plays into this game, it is a character unto itself and it sells and emphasises the moments in this game to another level.

The core of the game is to recruit would-be heroes, decide whether they are worth gear and supplies and then send them on expeditions. Repeat process until you have defeated prerequisite number of bosses and finally mount a expedition to explore and defeat the Entity that controls the Darkest Dungeon.

It is a simple premise, but to get there is a long and arduous journey that will see many a moment of heroism, death, disaster, defeat and triumphs.

The town that you start with is in a ramshackle state and nearly abandoned and in the beginning it is difficult to keep a healthy supply of mercenaries flowing into it. This problem is solved by taking on and completing expeditions, collecting supplies and being able to return with it using these proceeds to improve and upgrade aspects of the town and  the characters.

Expeditions consist of making a team of  up to 4, and initially can only equip them with supplies to help get them through in one piece. The amount of supplies to purchase is up to the player to decide for what type of expedition they intend to commit to and how committed they feel towards the team they will be sending.

Once a expedition starts, it will considered complete only once its condition has been met, this is important as successful ventures provide financial, resource and even equipment incentive. One of the most important mechanics during a mission is light. Light over the course of the group's travels fades over time and each level provides different buffs and debuffs, but the darkness can be pushed back with a use of a torch or certain character abilities. 

How this mechanic plays into the planning and plotting through an excursion is that at full light there will weaker stress tests and your characters will be harder for the enemy to ambush and get criticial hits on whereas in pitch darkness there is a great chance to suffer critical hits when hit, increased ambush chance, stronger stress checks but there is also a benefit of greatly increasing the value of loot that is collected. There is another risk of traveling in pitch darkness but that is best left to be learnt by experience. The effects are far harsher on newer recruits, but as your characters levels up they do become more resilient to the effects and this can serve as an interesting interpretation of "Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them".

The value of light also plays into the ambiance where the light level effects what the player will hear in the background of each area, where it gradually devolves into the area's specific ambiance growing louder and more distinct the less light there is.

To expand on the ambiance and sound, the game does a great job differentiating the different zones and in combat the music is appropriately weighty and complements it well, especially during boss fights where it reacts appropriately to the flow of battle.

In relation to Bosses, they become available after doing enough missions in a specific area. A minor nitpick, and probably due to budget constraints, is that the 8 major bosses are graphically the same on the 3 levels of dungeon intensity and although most of the bosses makes thematic sense to do so, one does feel a bit of a dissonance when the story revolves around a few of those entities that are not as easy to write into the consistent narrative of them being killed and revived again.

The Darkest Dungeon itself is an interesting place with even more interesting conditions once you start delving into its depths, but is something best experienced than written about.

The graphics are really nicely stylised and on closer inspection have a lot more detail than one would expect and it is not only the character models that this extends to. The enemy design has great visual clarity and from just looking at an enemy one can gauge what type of characteristics it would have.

The difficulty can be punishing, but it does provide the tools to mitigate risks while having game knowledge and understanding that increases the chance to clear content even against bad odds. 

The stress system is a double edge sword because through sufficient stress build up a character will first go through a stress roll which will more than likely roll an Affliction, which can be debilitating. 

Depending on affliction, they will act randomly and often times in disadvantages ways. If that stress is still not properly managed and it reaches the maximum stress again then the character will have a heart attack - and in the case of being on death's door before that, will instantly die. 

There is however a small chance that at the stress roll they will become virtuous instead and in this state they will be enhanced by a random virtue and can be a great boon on a team. 

After every excursion the participating members will accumulate stress, with those afflicted most likely developing a negative trait in the process. Characters also after dungeon runs can pick up and learn traits both good and bad and if one does not treat disease in the field will have to work on getting it treated. This is where the Sanitarium is incredibly useful as it can both treat your mercenaries of disease but also remove bad traits or alternatively reinforce good ones.

To characters that survive, treatment of stress can be controlled by one letting them recover slowly over time and not participating until their stress is at a respectable level or let them enjoy themselves at one of the activities in the town tavern or find some sort of spiritual comfort in the Abbey

Using the tavern,abbey and sanitarium can be expensive however and that expense goes up with the character level. It becomes unfeasible to treat every character and sometimes an attitude of detachment is required where one fires and hires new mercenaries to rank up and benefit from the loot they could potentially bring. 

It is a system that rewards a callous and detached approach to completing the game with only the best rising from the ranks of those that do not meet the cut being sent packing. 

Unless one plays on the Stygian/Bloodmoon difficulty where a more thoughtful approach is required as the game is not only more difficult, but it places a time and manpower casualty limit on the player.

If one were to summarise: Darkest Dungeon takes a fairly simple concept, refines it, adds a challenging gameplay loop and enhances it with engaging systems and rounds it out with great art and sound design, with voice work that will stay with you even after the credits roll, to make a game that is surprisingly good that is carried by the sum of its parts.

Image Source:

IGDB Darkest Dungeon

Video Source:

Darkest Dungeon Release Trailer