KickStarter Darkest Dungeon Pre-Release Thread

[Crooked Bee]

UPDATE: Kickstarter now live:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1460250988/darkest-dungeon-by-red-hook-studios

$15 for a digital copy

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http://www.darkestdungeon.com/game/
http://www.darkestdungeon.com/faq/

Darkest Dungeon is a hard-core RPG about the stresses of dungeon crawling. You will lead a band of four heroes on a perilous side-scrolling descent, dealing with a prodigious number of threats to their bodily health, and worse, a relentless assault on their mental fortitude! Five hundred feet below the earth you will not only fight unimaginable foes, but famine, disease, and the stress of the ever-encroaching dark. Darkest Dungeon focuses on the humanity and psychological vulnerability of the heroes and asks: What emotional toll does a life of adventure take?

[...] Characters' stress levels respond dynamically to virtually every occurrence in the dungeon, both positive and negative. Coming across a rotting corpse may unnerve your Highwayman, or may fuel your Crusader's determination. If the pressures of their circumstances become too overwhelming, their resolve is broken, and they will become afflicted with a myriad of psychological conditions ranging from paranoia, panic, greed, or even sadism . Afflicted party members will act out in a variety of ways that impact the play experience during combat, exploration, camping, and even in town. And like weary soldiers who have seen too much, your heroes will develop permanent quirks and emotional baggage based on their experiences.

Groundbreaking Turn-based Combat

Tactical, strategic, and deceptively deep, combat in Darkest Dungeon combines nostalgia with the elegance of modern design. It will challenge you in fresh new ways. Party order is crucial for setting up attacks, but it can also expose your heroes to threats. At all times, you must juggle the need to do damage with the importance of protecting the health and minds of your party members. Train, upgrade, and adjust your loadout to find the right combination of skills, honing your party into a four-person monster-wrecking Special Forces team.

• Invest in unique character skills, manage your loadout, and customize your party to your play style.
• Learn and master tactical positioning and skill combos.
• Battle a huge variety of enemies with challenging attacks and innovative mechanics.
• Use your party as a single fighting unit - set up and unleash combos using multiple characters to devasting effect!
• Face down intimidating bosses.
• Get obliterated by intimidating bosses!

Who is Darkest Dungeon For?

Darkest Dungeon is intended for gamers who appreciate a tough-but-fair challenge and want to experience dungeon crawling in a way they never have before. You will recruit, equip, and manage a stable of over 16 heroes, and watch as their experiences organically mold and shape them in positive, and...not-so-positive, ways. The combination of innovative combat and the truly unique Affliction System breathe fresh life into one of the oldest and most popular genres.

The game won't coddle you - characters will die, be driven mad, and develop both empowering and unfortunate side-effects from their dungeoneering lifestyle. Much like Dark Souls or X-Com played on Ironman mode, the stakes are always high - but bold moves and calculated strategy will reward you!​

Perma-death is in too. The launch platforms are PC, Mac and Linux. Naturally there's going to be a KS campaign soon enough too.

The game description sounds good to me, but the trailer leaves me somewhat disappointed:



I don't like the side-scrolling exploration, for one, and I can't really grasp how the combat is going to play out either. I guess we'll see.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So, a dungeon crawler with a sanity meter? The concepts seem interesting though.

 

[deuxhero]

I'm surprised sanity doesn't pop up more in fantasy RPGs, given that people who live as a "wandering murderous hobo" aren't going to be the most stable.

 

[Lorica]

Cool to see stress levels taken into account in a game. The FAQ is pretty light on how exactly affliction levels are managed. It kind of seems like it's based on build and tied to character actions, systems that aren't described yet. I'm a little disappointed that there's no mention of outfitting your party correctly--for all the flavour text about dwindling torchlight and limited supplies, there's no sign that the game will have you managing supplies. We'll see if what they're focusing on is enough to carry it.

I also wonder how much tactical positioning is there in a 2D battlefield? Not to say that there are no options, I'm just cautious.

Also, that about page makes me grumpy. It's "myriad" not "myriad of". And what about that description of combat is groundbreaking? Are they just throwing the name X-Com around? It seems like perma-death, morale, and a "roster" of units are the only similarities, but those aren't unique to X-Com. Grumble, grumble...

 

[Gregz]

I'm surprised sanity doesn't pop up more in fantasy RPGs, given that people who live as a "wandering murderous hobo" aren't going to be the most stable.

Uh oh bro, I think he heard you.

 

[Alchemist]

This looks very interesting to me. A lot of details remain to be seen but on first glance it looks promising. I'm unsure about side-scrolling exploration (would much rather a 1st-person view) but I'll wait and see how it looks and plays. I could see side-view tactical combat working if they allow for some depth in the scene for grid positioning.

Art style and overall vibe is excellent. I love the pen & ink + muted watercolor look, obviously inspired by Mike Mignola.

I'm getting a dark ages Call of Cthulhu vibe from this. Looking forward to more details...

 

[Grauken]

Art direction looks good, gameplay, well there's not much to see yet

 

[tuluse]

Is the trailer showing actual gameplay or just like cinematic this is what the game is abstracting?

 

[Grauken]

I've read the FAQ (combat and other mechanics) and it reminds me of various Kickstarter pages that seems to imply a lot, but could mean a lot of different things however your expectations are, and without going into the nitty-gritty detail just doesn't say anything substantial how things actually work

 

[Kos_Koa]

I like that they're emphasizing the party's psychological condition as a factor to dungeon exploration. It could be decent.

 

[4too]

Homage To Chico Marx

…
Characters' stress levels respond dynamically to virtually every occurrence in the dungeon, both positive and negative . Coming across a rotting corpse may unnerve your Highwayman, or may fuel your Crusader's determination. If the pressures of their circumstances become too overwhelming, their resolve is broken, and they will become afflicted with a myriad of psychological conditions ranging from paranoia, panic, greed, or even sadism . …

… sanity meter …

ho, ho, ho! Darkest D, in each player character's Constitution, there lurks a sanity clause!






4too

 

[Lady_Error]

Is the trailer showing actual gameplay or just like cinematic this is what the game is abstracting?

I was wondering about the same thing.

 

[Alchemist]

Is the trailer showing actual gameplay or just like cinematic this is what the game is abstracting?

I was wondering about the same thing.

I'm pretty sure this is just a cinematic teaser showing the art style and atmosphere, and some backstory. They mention in the youtube comments that gameplay footage is coming later.

 

[Excidium]

Talks a whole lot about character and combat systems but nothing about the actual dungeon.

 

[4too]

Teaser Macabre



Narrator of DD 'toon teaser brings Wayne June to my memory.

Excellent reader of Lovecraft and Poe, good voice for artistic madness.

In reading between the lines, and clauses, of their presentation, project their choice of voice talent as a glimmer of glamour.

Sample June reading Poe's The City In The Sea …


////////////////

EDIT: Confirmed Wayne June as teaser narrator at DD blog.

A sample of his Lovecraft talent is embedded in SFF Audio Podcast #126

http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=32560





4too

 

[Murk]

Hrm; the ideas are neat and the trailer was ... cool, albeit no real info of course.

I want to like this idea on first glance, but I can't help but feel that basically there are a bunch of buffs and debuffs and instead of "sure strike" or "zen archery" they're just renamed to "oh crap i'm afraid" and "my god gives me strength".

Still, may be decent yet...

Having said all that, I'm stoked about this class:

 

[GlutenBurger]

Talks a whole lot about character and combat systems but nothing about the actual dungeon.

That's because nobody's seen it. It's too damned dark.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Game's aspects sound neat.

But it won't mean shit if the combat system and dungeon generation\exploration are shit. So, hoping for the best.

Also, I hope they won't ask for too high a goal on the inevitable Kickstarter.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

Looks and sounds like a VERY COOL-LOOKING blobber. Not big on you gyz list but I wouldn't mind some jumping/vertical flavor to my dungeon navigation ala Zelda II (double points if where you land on screen influences how TB battles play out in big ways!).

As for delving into the characters' psychologies, that sounds awesome!

 

[Crooked Bee]

My main gripe is that it doesn't sound like a blobber, actually The exploration is side-scroller-ish, for one.

But yeah, okay, it does sound cool. I'm just a blobber fanatic.

 

[Cosmo]

Loving the art and the design principles. I'm getting a strong Mignola-Lankhmar feeling about the former, which is always good.

 

[Alchemist]

I'm trying to think of RPGs that had side-view exploration and the main one I thought of was Drakkhen (in the interiors):

I wonder if DD will be something like that?

Also there's Dragon's Crown for comparison:

 

[dragonbait]

Hrm; the ideas are neat and the trailer was ... cool, albeit no real info of course.

I want to like this idea on first glance, but I can't help but feel that basically there are a bunch of buffs and debuffs and instead of "sure strike" or "zen archery" they're just renamed to "oh crap i'm afraid" and "my god gives me strength".

Still, may be decent yet...

Having said all that, I'm stoked about this class:

The plague doctor reminds me of Garindan.

 

[potatojohn]

Not the actual thing?

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Concept seems interesting enough. But how exactly are they implementing Tactical combat in side-scrolling exploration? Would have preferred if ti was Top-down or isometric though.