The game was first released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in January 2016, which followed a year-long early access development period. If you’re a fan of this style of play it is an easy recommendation but if you’ve not dipped your toe in the pool yet this may be a bit deeper an end to jump into than most so you’ve been warned.Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike role-playing video game developed and published by Red Hook Studios. It’s both thrilling and depressing and captures the essence of what makes roguelikes so interesting all at once. One particularly bad mission can cripple even your AAA team if enough manages to go wrong and while you can pay to remedy afflictions the cost will make you think it over very carefully. Sadly, even when you carefully manage your resources and try to keep your accumulated rotation of characters in good shape you’ll need to accept that any happy thoughts and feelings are often fleeting.

There’s no glory without challenge and sacrifice and when you manage even small victories in Darkest Dungeon they can feel terrific. In the end it’s the difficulty and unpredictability at the core of the game that will either make it incredibly appealing to you or rightfully scare you away. This game is fantastic and is worth playing for anyone willing to attempt to explore the darkest dungeon. I found this to be one of the strongest indie games which I have played on my Switch, and it's score will reflect that. It is a stressful game and not for the faint of heart, but it features an easier mode for beginners. Darkest Dungeon will provide you with as many as 80 hours of gameplay thanks to how it cleverly employs procedurally generated content, permadeath and not forcing you to start the whole game over when your team dies. The art style is very detailed, and while the animations are simple, the camera zooming in dramatically at key moments makes it feel much more epic than it would otherwise. The writing is deliciously dark and detailed, and the journal entries embellish this factor of the game perfectly.

It makes the most of its assets to create a dynamic RPG with characters whose personalities are changed by the journeys they embark on. I was completely enthralled with this game.

Journal entry page 1 darkest dungeon