If the American writer H.P. Lovecraft would be alive
and would try to develop videogames,
probably Darkest Dungeon would be one of his creations.
Great horror writer, he chose, in his literature genre, macabre themes,
loathsome atmospheres, monstrous inventions, recalls to terrifying sounds,
visions and smells and unspeakable horrors:
he was a maestro in creating deformed mutants, humanoids half born
as scientific experiments,
miserable and frightening abortions of a science gone crazy and without rules.
Cthulhu is without doubt is best well-known creature.
(Call of Cthulhu, 1927) (90 years ago).
Though the comparison could seem forced
and I love trying to find parallelisms and analogies in fields totally different to each other,
this time is more than well-done:
the last creation of Red Hook Studios (independent software-house in Canada)
is more near to Lovecraft books than any videogame created.
Darkest Dungeon begins with a crowd founding campaign on Kickstarter
they received $313,337 of the $75,000 asked and the developing starts.
The mind behind everything is Chris Bourassa,
creative director of the project.
And it is immediately an unexpected success.
Its strongest qualities are, without doubt, artistic direction, music (Stuart Chatwood) and its gameplay and the dark and gothic environment.
What is Darkest Dungeon?
The player receives a hand written letter from an unknown relative
which is called Ancestor from the game.
He came to know of legends that says the estate is an entrance portal
towards huge power, and after depleting the family fortune trying
to find a way to reach that power,
with the help of a series of digging under the estate he finally brought to light an ancient stone portal
which finally is opened through a ritual and an old relic.
But this frees an ancient power that corrupts the estate
and the near village and brings the ancestor to craziness.
Desperate and in search for a way out, but willing to redeem the name of his family,
gaining the estate back in control and eliminating the freed evil.
The letter, written by the Ancestor just few moments before committing suicide with a pistol shot,
is a testament and last confession, telling us about the facts that occurred
during the game and what happened that lead to the transformation of the estate
from florid and rich place into a concentrated place of death and corruption.
The estate and the hamlet represent the zone of the game,
where the player can recruit new heroes, develop them, heal them, buy equipment,
cure stress and plan the next mission in the 4 zones of the game:
the ruins with skeletons, necromancer, cultists;
the cave with fish men, bandits, siren, a pirate ship as boss;
the weald with cannibals, cannibal hag, mad dogs, slimes
and then the warrens with enemies as infected meat, pig men as result of experiments of the old ancestor.
The mission must be faced with four heroes, there are several classes to choose,
each one with features and peculiarity.
Fundamental, characterizing and frightening element of Darkest Dungeon is permanent death,
permadeath, if a hero dies, is gone for good and with him all the money spent on.
This, of course, brings a significant burden on our choices  during the adventure,
because the idea of losing a hero where we invested a lot of resources and time is terrifying, in terms of videogaming.
Another key feature of the game is stress, a genius move:
our heroes, recruited each week from the stage coach, facing the horrors
and nightmares of the dungeons in their missions,
will cumulate stress, and after a certain amount of it, they will cause trouble during the battle.
If they reach one hundred, a test will be faced on the battlefield, a resolve test
that could be good or bad with an empowerment of the character and heroes next to him
or it could go wrong and resolve in affliction
(paranoid, selfish, irrational, fearful, hopeless, abusive, masochistic, rapturous)
that damages inevitably the good outcome of the fight.
Reaching two hundred in stress, the hero will suffer heart attack and will die definitely.
As you can see Darkest Dungeon is a game that has to be played seriously,
it does not forgive and punish every rash choice of the player,
and that is what fascinates me the most:
a wrong decision and the mission will result in a failure, with bloodshed, heroes’ death
and permanent game over if short on gold.
Because, of course and obviously, Darkest Dungeon punishes the waste of resources.
Talking about resources, how do we generate them?
The resource is gold, we find it in chests scattered around the dungeons during the adventures
and once the objective is completed we can finally put the hands on our loot.
Furthermore we will find all over the place family heirlooms
(busts, portraits, deeds and crests)
that will develop the buildings in the village and unlock new abilities for the heroes.
All the dungeons are created procedurally, so they will be different each time,
it is useless to draw maps. We will be forced to face a different dungeon each time
Instead will be useful to understand which object to use to interact with curios
found on our path: statues, confessionals, torture tools, scrolls, altars, dead animals carcass, pools of light.
I leave to the player the testing.
Try always to not spend so much and develop the buildings in the village that require deeds.
In the bottom left corner there is the possibility to trade them,
creating what we need in that moment.
After each mission remember to recruit new heroes and do not invest on them
until we will understand the mechanisms of the game:
the quirks, feature of the characters, they will give bonus or malus,
as results of the horrors experienced in the dungeons.
They could be eliminated or locked, spending gold in the specific building.
Other buildings are the inn to heal stress through gambling, drinking or visiting the brothel,
the church through praying, meditation or flagellation to cure stress.
It has to be remembered that the hero that will do the activity, will be blocked
for one virtual week: just complete a mission to take him back.
Just before commencing the mission, remember to wear trinkets, objects, baubles that give bonus effects,
very useful; buy food, torches, one key for the treasures,
two or three shovels for possible obstacles that will cause stress if ripped out with bare hands,
bandages, anti-venom.
If the mission is medium or more, there will be the chance to camp,
eat and heal stress through camping heroes abilities.
Usually you have to buy eight food supply for short dungeons,
twenty for medium and thirty-two for long,
and eight torches for short, twelve for medium and sixteen for long dungeons.
Keep an eye on the torch meter, been in blackness during the dungeons is very dangerous
because the horrors and monsters will be more strong and powerful in the dark.
I could go on forever talking about the importance of scouting,
aiming to see what waits for us in the rooms,  giving priority to damage during battles,
what those yellow and red dots are in the hero card (their preferred position on the battlefield
and the positions they can reach with an attack),
I could say eliminate enemies that cause stress first,
to dismiss heroes with high level of stress instead of healing them, to save gold;
try to have at least seventy thousand gold to be safe
because Darkest Dungeon is a resource managing game too;
try to camp before exiting a dungeon to heal stress,
recruit vestals first because they heal wounds in battle;
try to let the hero with high stress and high chance to disarm get rid of the traps
so the stress will be reduced.
But I am saying too much.
Mention of honor for the music score of Stuart Chatwood
a great artist who has perfectly recreated the horrific atmosphere of the game,
the fear of unknown and danger behind every corner,
the change of music as the torch fades out is an anthology.
And of course a round of applause could not be absent for the in-game narrating voice:
Wayne June, actor and exceptional book reader (audiobooks)
exceptional, that will guide us during the game,
accentuating the battles or letting us sink in the abyss at the slightest reversal of fortunes.
Darkest Dungeon is a great game,
sometimes it seems that hates you as ruthless and punitive it can result,
but you will learn to love it because it was created by competent people,
that love what they do and they do it right.
Honestly it called to mind, with nostalgia, board games like Heroquest
in the eighties or the modern Descent: journey in to the dark,
it quenches the craving for adventure, the pleasure for unknown,
for discovering, for a board on the table,
with friends, with mysteries to be solved, treasures, power ups,
magic objects, shining weapons and the need to do prudent and aimed choices
because the specter of failure and permanent death is always in ambush.
And everything is flavored with polished English,
ancient, that allows us to immerse in the setting,
thanks to mottos, proverbs, pearls of wisdom and catch phrases
that the narrator / ancestor will give us during the adventure.
So… buy Darkest Dungeon, like, subscription and thanks for the kind attention.
The Darkest Dungeon waits for us, we will eradicate the evil from this land, at any cost…
