Success in Darkest Dungeon requires throwing human lives at your problems, forcing your employees into the tunnels again and again, without mercy, like a Dickensian villain. Or, to put it in more grandiose terms, the tyrannical industrialist. It's appropriate, then, that Darkest Dungeon casts the player as a particularly modern figure: the middle manager. Lovecraft scholars believe he was reacting to the encroaching specter of modernity, with racial integration, large-scale industrialization and international communication technology transforming the quiet Northeastern world he found safe. Lovecraft and the genre of cosmic horror, which focuses on the terror of the unknown. There are obvious debts here to the work of H.P. But that gets expensive, and you've got a business to run. You can pay to treat their afflictions, sending them to the doctor, the abbey, or the tavern. Your characters will fight you, refusing commands and even turning on each other, if you traumatize them enough. That bounty hunter might refuse a desperately needed healing spell, out of fear that it is poisoned. These afflictions add up to something like a personality. A bounty hunter may develop a penchant for irrational paranoia. Maybe your vestal will become obsessed with self-flagellation as a means to feel safe and pure. They're coping mechanisms, or manifestations of PTSD. At a certain point, characters will develop afflictions or quirks. Every moment spent in these places is traumatizing, as represented by a stress meter. The dungeons you explore are full of wrong things, and death is always waiting somewhere close. Chances are, they will not.Īggravating this is an emphasis on the mental health of your party. A dead fighter is never coming back, and if you spent five hours building a party of high-level champions to take on the final areas, you'd better hope they survive long enough to complete the task. Combat is meticulous and turn-based, pitting parties of four against all the worst things the developers could come up with. Each expedition is a slowly unravelling disaster, as you have to juggle the health and comfort of your adventurers against your resources and ambitions.
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