Most RPGs ask you to keep your party alive, but Darkest Dungeon asks you to keep them from completely falling apart in the process. In the highly rated turn-based roguelike, the heroes come with considerably more emotional baggage than your average collection of stat blocks.
The gothic game offers a grim, wonderfully nerve-racking take on dungeon crawling, in which sometimes the most dangerous things in the darkness are your comrades in arms. Sound like spooky fun? You can bag a Darkest Dungeon Steam key for just $9.99 (regularly $24.99).
Darkest Dungeon Steam key deal
In Darkest Dungeon, your characters’ health is only part of the problem. Every one also has a stress meter that climbs as they encounter darkness, critical hits and particularly unpleasant events like watching a teammate die.
Let that stress get out of control, and a hero can develop an Affliction, becoming paranoid, selfish, abusive or hopeless. That can make them actively work against the party you’re desperately trying to keep functional. Occasionally, they’ll develop a Virtue instead and rise to the occasion.
In its review, IGN called Darkest Dungeon “a grim and merciless tactical strategy game whose great tension comes from its many layers of complexity, unpredictable randomization, and willingness to put our fragile characters in mortal danger if we dare to venture into its depths in search of treasure and glory.”
Don’t get too attached to any of those characters, either. Death is permanent.
A chilling twist on classic gameplay
Darkest Dungeon’s combat revolves around four-person parties and positioning, with abilities that only work from specific ranks. There are 16 playable hero classes, including Crusader, Plague Doctor, Hellion and Leper. That gives you plenty of different ways to construct a party before sending everyone somewhere terrible.
Between expeditions, you’re responsible for the Hamlet. You’ll upgrade its blacksmith, guild, sanitarium, tavern and abbey while deciding which heroes get your limited resources, treatment, equipment and rest.
All of this plays out against Chris Bourassa’s hand-drawn gothic artwork and narration from Wayne June, creating a Lovecraftian atmosphere that doesn’t exactly encourage relaxed gaming before bed.
A full Darkest Dungeon campaign runs approximately 60 to 80 hours, with harder difficulty settings potentially stretching that further. There are also 126 Steam achievements and support for 12 interface and subtitle languages.
That’s an impressively long opportunity to make some terrible decisions.
Save on Darkest Dungeon with this Steam key deal
Darkest Dungeon doesn’t try to make you feel invincible. It forces you to figure out how long you can keep a deeply imperfect party functioning when everything goes wrong.
Don’t miss your chance to get a Darkest Dungeon Steam key for just $9.99 . That’s a 60% discount off the regular price of $24.99.
Unlike most games on Apple Arcade, this one’s not for kids. The Entertainment Software Rating Board rated Darkest Dungeon T for Teen due to “Alcohol Reference, Blood and Gore, Mild Language, Partial Nudity, Suggestive Themes, and Violence.”
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