Buildings in the Halmet can be upgraded with Heirlooms, which are special items found inside the dungeons. In addition to hiring fresh meat for the grinder at the Hamlet, you also can upgrade your heroes’ skills, buy entirely new skills for them, upgrade their weapons, pay respects to your fallen heroes, treat diseases, and de-stress your heroes. In a fit of extreme stupidity, he leads a mining expedition to unearth the portal, and the results are about what you’d expect: Hellish creatures escape, they kill everybody, and the owner commits suicide because he, too, realized what a moron he was. The game’s story starts with the owner of an old estate–named The Darkest Estate unless you change it–who discovered an ancient portal buried deep underneath his manor. I say Lovecraftian-like because there don’t appear to be any explicit references to Lovecraftian lore, though the inspiration is clearly there (a monster depicted in the opening cinematic looks strikingly similar to Cthulu). It’s true that “soul-crushingly difficult” isn’t exactly the most positive description of a video game, but it actually works in Darkest Dungeon‘s case.ĭarkest Dungeon is a roguelike RPG developed by Red Hook Studios, which takes place in a gothic, Lovecraftian-like universe.

And yet, somehow, I keep coming back to it over and over to subject myself to more pseudo-psychological torture.

Where do I even begin? Darkest Dungeon is one of the most soul-crushingly difficult games I’ve ever played, and that’s with Dark Souls in mind.

Darkest dungeon interview narrative