With each passing year and a lot of Kickstarter projects finally coming to fruition, more and more attention and expectations are being cast upon these independent titles. After all, games like Shadowrun Returns, The Banner Saga or Broken Age can easily compete and even surpass titles that have the support of big publishers.
Darkest Dungeon is another one of those projects that has a ton of promise and that I personally want to see completed. If done correctly, this project from Red Hook Studios might quickly become one of the most original roguelike RPG's out there.
What is Darkest Dungeon?
According to the developers and all the pictures and videos available at their Kickstarter page, Darkest Dungeon is going to be a very dark and terrifying roguelike RPG. With each and every step that your brave heroes take, a bit of their courage is leeched, paranoia sets in, fear, irrationality and a few other not so manly feelings start to creep in, "What will happen when they reach their breaking point?".
This emotional baggage system can become incredibly fun (and terrifying) as it is something we haven't really seen in a roguelike before. No longer will you fight only flesh and blood foes but also the unimaginable darkness.
The combat in Darkest Dungeon will reveal the tactician in players brave enough to set out on this dangerous journey. Tough decisions will have to be made, the consequences of your poor choices will be permanent, severe and maybe even fatal.
Starting with the party composition and order you will have to choose which one of your fighters will take point, remember, monsters are not the only threat when you step into the darkness.
Decisions, decisions, even resting in Darkest Dungeon is an event saturated with decisions.
Using your "camping skill" will allow your party to set up camp and plan further advances into the dungeon. According to the devs there will be a few options available like scouting ahead, setting up a defensive perimeter or conserving provisions, all of these decisions will have positive and negative consequences of course.
Finally let's talk about the town in Darkest Dungeon, here is where your heroes will be able to recover from their dangerous missions and relax a bit. You will start off with only a few desolate buildings like a tavern and a church, as you progress through the game a few more structures can indeed be built, from them a few more commodities like extra classes and upgraded gear will appear.
After reading pretty much everything in Red Hook Studios Kickstarter page the Town is what concerns me the most, hopefully players won't be able to transform their party members into four gods of oblivion that wreak havoc upon once terrifying dungeons just by simply grinding a lot.
You can find out a lot more about Darkest Dungeon simply by taking a look at their
Kickstarter page, their initial stretch goal was $75.000 (already achieved) which seemed reasonable, especially when you take into consideration that a lot of work has already been done. Hopefully the experienced Red Hook Studios team will be able to reach a higher stretch goal so that we get even more content when the game finally comes out in 2015 (predicted).
Kickstarter Page: Link
Darkest Dungeon Website: Link
