On the face of it, things don’t get much grimmer than Darkest Dungeon. It opens with eldrich horror, suicide and ruin. It’s darker than a burlap sack of smashed toys. There’s even a warning about how terrible things are likely to get. But in practice, it’s so glum that it verges on black comedy. Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do, often in ways that are so hopeless that it feels slapstick. Not only do characters die, but the horror of their exertions afflicts them with all manner of stress-based maladies. They get fearful, selfish and phobic.
In my playthrough I was forced to put my A Team into fantasy rehab while I sent Team Backup Plan into the wilds to explore. I spent ten desperate minutes trying to keep my vestal battle nun alive long enough to escape, only to have her die of hunger immediately after. Which caused my highwayman to go mad and stop obeying my commands. Which caused my plague doctor to have a nervous breakdown. In the end, only two of the characters survived long enough to escape the fight and one died of a heart attack immediately afterwards. Swap out the rabid dogs and coronaries for custard pies and pratfalls, and you basically have a Three Stooges sketch. But if anything, the awfulness of it all just makes me want to go back in and delve deeper. Whereas most games make you lament your failures, Darkest Dungeon makes me want to tell strangers at bus stops about the things my favourite crusader is frightened of. I found myself especially attached to my shapeshifting abomination, who only seemed to get more focussed as more downside, every time he transformed, the rest of the team shit the bed.
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