Darkest Dungeon - RPS Review

Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes a look at the cruel dungeon crawler, Darkest Dungeon.

Darkest Dungeon [official site] begins with a foreboding admonition. It’s a game about making the most of a bad situation, you’re told from the outset. Your actions are permanent, therefore the quests you embark upon will often end in failure. “Heroes will die,” it says. “And when they die they stay dead.”

These preeminent words of wisdom project an honest sentiment that’s not only a tone-setter for Darkest Dungeon, but also serves to define its makeup: through each stage of development – from its beginnings, its crowdfunding success, a year-long stint in Early Access, and now onto full release – developer Red Hook Studios envisioned a brutally difficult game that would offer little in the way of concession. But does the game make death and despair engaging? Here’s wot I think.



Darkest Dungeon is the realisation of its theme and cruel twist on dungeon-crawling. Its prudent candor is what stands it apart from the hordes of commensurate permadeath-operating, procedurally-generating roguelikes available elsewhere. It’s a game that can be stubborn, incredibly frustrating, at times baffling, and often wonderful. It’s as much about micromanagement, resource gathering and squad building as it is about luck, perseverance and determination, where the line between hope and despair is often as hard to determine as guessing which mindset your haphazard crew will grudgingly drag onto the battlefield.

Unlike its genre siblings, though, it’s far from a whimsical fairy tale depicting valiant warriors and fervent champions, but the complete opposite. Worse still, it wastes no time reminding you of this at every turn.

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I was surprised at the quality of writing for this article, then saw I didn't recognize the author. Misuse and poor use of terms everywhere and numerous grammatical mistakes (though that's not unusual for RPS).

Some of it is actually next door to gibberish. You get the gist of what he's saying, but literally interpreted it makes no sense. It also takes him until paragraph 12 to mention that enemy attacks cause stress.