The Darkest of Dungeons

 

I think I first heard about the darkest dungeon video games at some point early last year. Or, since the game is several years old, I may have been hearing bits and pieces over the years.  I had started watching a lot of YouTube on my TV in my home office because I started working mostly from home during the week. As I would plug away with multiple databases and files opening on my two monitors I was discovering all kinds of things. About video games, politics, comic books. Anything that struck my fancy. Anything I could have on in the background that wouldn’t affect my productivity too much.

So I heard about these two video games; Darkest Dungeon one and two. Essentially fairly low animation based dungeon crawlers featuring multiple kinds of characters going into fairly brutal dungeon environments. One of the most interesting things about them was the characters could get stressed out by things like torches going out, monsters harming a teammate or from all kinds of things. if the stress would get bad enough you get afflicted. Kind of like sanity. They might get some kind of syndrome like a kleptomaniac or a sex addict. But also, at least in the first game, a character dying was permanent. You lose that character then you can no longer access them.

Vestal going ape shit

When I found out recently that the second one was still only available on computers and not consoles, and that the first one was available on Nintendo switch that decision was made. I wanted more games for my switch. I’m taking a break from Breath of the wild which I’m probably in the last 8 to 10% of as far as finishing it up. And the other game I have is called Cuphead and it’s hard as hell as far as platformers go and I got kind of tired of that one around the holidays. As I said I had been watching YouTube videos about DD for a long time and now that I’m a couple weeks into playing the game, I’m still watching those videos because it’s a steep learning curve.  

Crusader goes bat shit

And this last weekend I had started paying attention to the individual characters, character sheet menus, and their statuses, and all that. I would play a couple hours, going through a couple of the dungeons set ups. Practice using the menus. Over several hours of restarts I think I’m finally getting the basics. Knowing enough to think a little bit more long-term. This game from what I’ve heard has many hours in it. as far as this game and breath of the wild goes, the Nintendo switch for an older little system sure does not skimp on the size of gameplay. 

I want to have a real good idea on how to play this thing before I go for the long game.  I’ll prob  post again about the experience when I get about another 30 or 40 hours into it. Gets apparently more brutal and hard as you go along. A true old-school killer dungeon Master haha. 

Gravedigger goes bugnuts

below is a relatively short and very funny video about the game.

and of course, like any good dungeons and dragons video game the inspiration is there for your own real life games with people. I don’t know about the sanity style mechanic, but it certainly inspires you to run a killer, easy death campaign. And besides the town and all its facilities, the dungeon areas and the final castle just alone are inspiring for locations. Not a direct adaptation, but I can see running a campaign based on this. Characters coming to town by carriages and helping you or your ancestor whoever left you the place you get the joint cleaned up Tegal Manor style because oh boy is everything corrupt. Almost as much as characters who come here.

And yeah, you heard that right. Ancient module/setting Tegel Manor certainly comes to mine. The atmosphere the horrible monsters that also tend to have some gonzo humor in there, and even some portraits play large part of the game. 

Anyway, looking forward to even more brutal game play. 

Cheers