Like many budget-conscious gamers, I play video games on a lag. It’s cheaper both in terms of buying games and upgrading my PC—I fear the day I will be forced upgrade my GPU. As such, I think I should be congratulated for writing my review of Darkest Dungeon only ten years after its release.
Darkest Dungeon uses the standard dungeon-crawling setting and emphasizes the psychological toll imposed on the dungeon-crawlers. Like any other roguelike RPG, the player must manage the small set of resources—money, health, useful items, skills—their characters possess to accomplish the tasks set before them. One of those resources is the characters’ mental health, represented by the Stress statistic. Too much Stress, and the character becomes Afflicted—an obvious parallel to real-world mental health problems. Afflicted characters act erratically: they will occasionally ignore the player’s orders, refuse to put themselves in harm’s way, abuse other characters, or even harm themselves during combat. Darkest Dungeon is of course not the first RPG to measure the mental health of its characters, but it is the first to make it the key mechanic. Character health resets after every quest; Stress lingers on, absent (expensive) efforts to reduce it, so the high-level characters you need to tackle the more difficult dungeons are all too likely to come along with a thousand-yard stare.
Darkest Dungeon is a punishing game—character death is permanent, there is no such thing as reverting to an older save, and even with optimal play, it is always possible for bad luck to cause a complete party death. But underneath its trappings, the game is relatively simple. Stripped away from the flavoring, the there are only so many ways to arrange your party of four heroes. Once you have mastered the mechanics, only the surprise of a new enemy type will cause the player trouble, and even then, these challenges do not require new skills or more powerful heroes, merely a reshifting of priorities.
Near the end of the game, the gameplay starts to wear a bit threadbare; what felt like deserved punishment for bad gameplay earlier now feels like a bad dice roll that imposes more work. As I prepared to finish my playthrough, I made a mistake that killed a critical hero—the only one that had the correct skills to overcome a specific enemy in a climactic quest. There was nothing to do but recruit a new hero of the same class and painstakingly level them up to the appropriate level. This was so frustrating that I put the game down, only regaining the patience to grind my way through after a couple weeks of waiting. (In truth, the grind was not that bad, only requiring a couple hours of playtime, but it still galled—I have no tolerance for games-as-a-job.)
The game does take pity on its players in one way: it is impossible to permanently lose your campaign. No matter how many characters die in pursuit of “trifling victories,” there will always be new recruits. Compose another party and try again.
The trappings of the game build on top of the core idea while still being charmingly simple. The art is 2D, heavily inspired by woodcut-style artwork, and the animation is limited (as you might expect for an indie game). Virtue is made from necessity in this instance, as the limited but expressive artwork supports the other elements.
The Narrator, speaking in a gravelly accent I’m still not sure is supposed to be Scottish or faux-Scottish, is omnipresent, describing the player’s victories and defeats, as well as plot-relevant events, in wonderfully overwrought language, and his delivery achieves the gravitas required for such florid writing; imagine the the line “we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil” delivered completely straight—no cheap resort to irony here.
RPGs, by their name and nature, encourage the player to take on a role, to identify with the characters they control. Some RPGs, like Crusader Kings, rely on the player getting personally attached to their little ball of pixels—all the better to create a narrative on top of a series of dice rolls. Darkest Dungeon warns the player up front that it cannot be played like this. Your heroes will die, and you must let them. Attempting to save every hero will slow any progress to a standstill. Experienced players will set up an assembly line of recruitment, questing, and then death or release; the most efficient option to handle a shellshocked character is to discharge them, so their spot on a limited roster can be filled by fresh meat. But even as the player hardens their heart and learns to treat their heroes as resources rather than friends, the game does not allow them to forget their characters’ anguish. A paladin driven to madness rants at his fellows: “I am saddled with iniquitous cowards. For shame!” A healer beset by fear whispers: “I am not up to this task, Light forgive me!” The rogue, in his paranoia, refuses any ministrations: “Sorry, friend… I know your kind of ‘medicine.’” And the Narrator provides a cutting remark when the player dismisses a hero: “Another soul battered and broken, cast aside like a spent torch.”
Darkest Dungeon is a small and simple roguelike RPG that is elevated to excellence by the quality of its writing, narration, and environmental storytelling. Hardcore gameplayers will master the mechanics quickly, though they will still be occasionally punished by the restrictions the game imposes; more casual players will learn more slowly, but will never be locked out of progress. Generally, restrictions and setbacks are masterfully dressed up to motivate the player to learn and try again, though seams can show in select places. If it was not already obvious, the mood of the game stuck with me much more than the gameplay itself. I enjoyed playing it, and look forward to reviewing Darkest Dungeon II, circa 2033.