Played

A shining example

Designer: Alex Olteanu & Marco Portugal | Publisher: CMON Global Limited

Massive Darkness 2 is not the straightforward sequel that fans of the original might have expected. While the game retains its dungeon crawler origins, the base game of Massive Darkness 2 is no longer a campaign. Instead, it is made up of a series of scenarios with pre-determined layouts and different objectives. Refreshingly, the objectives expand beyond ‘kill all the enemies’ type of scenario.

However, the true excitement of Massive Darkness 2 comes from the characters. Gone are the days when asymmetric abilities, different equipment and levelling up generates enough excitement in gameplay for several hours at a time. Sure, Massive Darkness 2 has that too, but it also takes a step beyond that. Characters don’t simply come with their own strengths and weakness, their play style is dramatically different, creating their own mini games within the shell of the dungeon crawler. Ranger, for example, uses a push-your-luck mechanism for its ranged attacks. When they fire an arrow, the player turns over cards from their dedicated deck, trying to get seven arrow signs. They can stop drawing cards whenever they want, they get less than seven, the attack is also not as powerful. Overshoot and get more than seven arrows, and the attack gains bad consequences. Yet, hit the bullseye – precisely seven arrows – and you get to deal powerful, deadly, amounts of damage to the enemy. Shaman uses resource management mechanics, to manipulate elements to add powerful bonuses to his attack. Wizard uses a rondel to cast their spells, which can be upgraded over time. Rogue uses a draw bag to pull out modifiers to their actions and manipulates the contents of their bag as the game progresses.