Admittedly, some of this is by design: you don?t include permadeaths and frequent autosave points in your game unless you?re trying to make things as difficult as possible, so I?m not going to criticize this game for that. It?s more that it does things in a way that makes it a hard game to truly love. Between the quick speed at which torches burn out while you crawl through dungeons and the traps and gothic horrors that await your every step, it’s easy to feel a constant sense of unease throughout your time with Darkest Dungeon.Īs for the rest…I wouldn’t say that Darkest Dungeon does anything really badly, necessarily. On top of that, the game’s entire aesthetic is pretty creepy. Every description of the players? collective terror, of the encroaching dark, of the blow-by-blow in every battle: it’s all given a kind of horrifying gravitas that’s guaranteed to draw you in. With that kind of background, it should come as no surprise that he brings an appropriately creepy, menacing vibe to the proceedings here.

To that end, developers Red Hook Studios went out and got a narrator, Wayne June, who - per Wikipedia - is best known for lending his talents to H.P. Darkest Dungeon is all about its moody, miserable atmosphere. I’ll say this for Darkest Dungeon: the things it does well, it does very, very well.

Darkest dungeon game review