Darkest Dungeon is a downloadable RPG game where, as a player, you enjoy a great turn-based combat system. During the game, you explore monster-infested dungeons. The game puts a lot of focus on the psychological state of the characters you control. It will constantly change due to stress and fear. These feelings arise from the unnerving expeditions to dungeons where your heroes have to face terrifying monsters, watch macabre and suffer lack of food.
The Full Game
Darkest Dungeon can be downloaded from Steam or GOG. The game has received a couple of expansions. These are Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court and Darkest Dungeon: The Shieldbreaker. The downloadable Darkest Dungeon: Ancestral Edition, including both the DLC and the basic version of the game together with the soundtrack, which can also be downloaded separately. There is also a third expansion – The Colour of Madness.
How to Download Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court
The DLC Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court can be downloaded separately and in the Darkest Dungeon: Ancestral Edition bundle. In The Crimson Court, you get to know the story of the Ancestor’s youth (he is the owner of the estate who brought in the unimaginable evil). The players receive also have a new character class, and a new dungeon with more enemies, including five new bosses and one wandering boss. In the dungeons, you can also count on finding new trinkets. The hamlet has also been developed, with 10 new buildings available.
How to Get Darkest Dungeon: The Shieldbreaker
Darkest Dungeon: The Shieldbreaker is available for download from Steam or GOG.com and as part of the full Darkest Dungeon: Ancestral Edition bundle. In the second DLC, the players receive a new character class – the eponymous Shieldbreaker with additional items and monsters that are associated with the new hero’s backstory.
Getting Darkest Dungeon: The Colour of Madness
The third DLC for this dark fantasy RPG game with the release planned for the second quarter of 2018, will tell the story of the meteor, which will fall on the hamlet, changing the residents into zombies. Of course, you can expect new dungeons and other terrifying creatures, as well as a new game mode. The Colour of Madness will be available for download in digital distribution.
The Game Review
The world in Darkest Dungeon was based on the works of Howard Philips Lovecraft. The campaign in the game takes place in the ruins of an old estate, in its surroundings, and in the huge dungeon system located underneath.
The terrible strength of the forces of darkness is the result of the recklessness of the ruler of these lands, the Ancestor. The player gets to know the whole story in a cut-scenes during the campaign. You will learn about the motivations of the Ancestor and the monsters he has brought to this world.
The members of your party are daredevils ready to face any evil. During the game, each team member must deal with stress and phobias. For this reason, after every dungeon mission, your characters begin to feel strong negative emotions and to develop unwanted reactions or inclinations. Then the only way out is to provide them with rest and treatment and recruit new volunteers for the next dungeon crawl. The heroes you left in the hamlet will be probably ready to join again once you return. It is worth to keep your characters in shape, because unfortunately the death of the hero in Darkest Dungeon is final, and it is difficult to part with the character with which you have adventured for so long and who has reached a high level of experience.
Your adventurers are fighting not only with monsters but also have to guard against traps, sustain hunger and suffer terrifying darkness. There is a cure for everything. You can disarm traps with the help of the specialists in your team. You can successfully combat starvation with the food you take with you or find on the way, while the best defense against darkness is your trusty torch. However, the backpacks of your heroes are not bottomless. You have to remember that you also need to take with you the items that are useful in the fight, including, for example, an antidote to poison or bandages. At the end of the day, it’s you who decides what items you will take on the expedition. Provided that you can afford to buy them. And having enough money in Darkest Dungeon it is often a struggle because the treatment of stressed companions costs just as much as it is expensive to equip them with better equipment and upgrade their skills.
A lack of attention to the mental state of the team members may be costly. They will panic, experience paranoia, delusions and plunge into madness. And all this means that you will not be able to effectively use their services.
Any goods and loot collected during the campaign, such as gold or valuable items, is worth to have invested in restoring the hamlet to its former glory and beyond. If you do so, your heroes will also be able to use the city’s infrastructure. A character from the game can relax or get a treatment in the city, which will help in further combat. And during the expeditions, the game also offers a camping system that lets your characters to go back to shape during rest. Unfortunately, there is no rose without thorns. While your characters sleep, monsters may attack, and then the party will often be unprepared and caught by surprise in a suboptimal bad battle formation. This may result in serious losses – lost health, increased stress and even death.
Well, since we are talking about the formation, it is crucial for your turn-based struggles. You place each of your heroes deliberately one behind the other (this is a 2D game) to make the most of their strengths and also to protect those with lesser armor or fewer hit points. You place the strong warriors at the front and the specialists in ranged combat and the mages go behind. It is also worth knowing that depending on the spot in the row, each character may or may not use some of his skills.
This mechanics is known by the monsters, who will often do their best to change your formation. And it’s even worse when one of your characters gets killed. Then the last character in a row will never be able to perform an attack that can be only made from the fourth place in the row.
At such a moment of crisis, you can try to escape (so that your other characters do not die under the pressure of the enemy’s prevailing forces), however, such an escape will mean a high level of stress incurred by the survivors. An additional problem will be a lack of loot which you receive as a reward at the end of the game which will probably mean financial problems with funding the next expedition. In such a case you will often have to recruit new people and repeat missions for the beginners to earn some money.
Darkest Dungeon has many features of the roguelike game. You have randomly generated levels, high difficulty level, and permanent death.
To comfortably play Darkest Dungeon on Windows PC, the gear you should have the following parameters:
- Dual-Core 2.5 GHz processor,
- at least 4 GB RAM,
- graphics card 512 MB GeForce 8800 or better.
According to the players, this game can be either loved or hated. The obvious pros include such features as an original graphic design, challenging play, dark brooding atmosphere and a great interesting sounding narrator (who uses imaginative statements and old-fashioned words).
