{"id":157,"date":"2018-03-04T15:46:48","date_gmt":"2018-03-04T20:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/?p=157"},"modified":"2018-03-24T10:41:34","modified_gmt":"2018-03-24T15:41:34","slug":"darkest-dungeon-aka-holy-shit-my-party-died-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/?p=157","title":{"rendered":"Darkest Dungeon (AKA Holy shit! My party died again!?!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this quick review, I am taking a look at the game <a href=\"https:\/\/www.darkestdungeon.com\/\">Darkest Dungeon<\/a> by Red Hook Studios.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"735\" height=\"413\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h-mXN3akTPU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>From their website:<br \/>\n<em>&#8220;Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. You will lead a band of heroes on a perilous side-scrolling descent, dealing with a prodigious number of threats to their bodily health, and worse, a relentless assault on their mental fortitude! Five hundred feet below the earth you will not only fight unimaginable foes, but famine, disease, and the stress of the ever-encroaching dark. Darkest Dungeon focuses on the humanity and psychological vulnerability of the heroes and asks: What emotional toll does a life of adventure take?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_159\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-159\" style=\"width: 185px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-159 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/vestal.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"185\" height=\"583\" srcset=\"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/vestal.jpg 185w, https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/vestal-95x300.jpg 95w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 185px) 100vw, 185px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-159\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><em>I cast magic missile!<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_158\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-158\" style=\"width: 246px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-158 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/bountyhunter.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"246\" height=\"571\" srcset=\"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/bountyhunter.jpg 246w, https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/bountyhunter-129x300.jpg 129w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 246px) 100vw, 246px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-158\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><em>Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I picked up this game really not knowing what is was on a recent Steam Sale and I have to admit I am happy that I did. The game is challenging. Any one of your heroes can get wiped out in many horrible ways and there is <em>no coming back!\u00a0<\/em>That&#8217;s right, perma-death. This is not the first time I have played something like this (I have played <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dark_Souls\">Dark Souls<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/FTL:_Faster_Than_Light\">FTL<\/a>) but I was taken a bit off guard with the quickness my first party was dispatched. Not only that, there is also sickness, quirks and even madness to affect your party! It&#8217;s something else to see a character that you have been working on (and maybe even got slightly attached to) go nuts and you lose them. After getting the hang of things, I found the game to be quite enjoyable (if not a tad stressful at times). The main thing for me was learning how to balance monies, resources and figure out my character&#8217;s strengths.\u00a0 As of this writing\u00a0 my two favorites to bring on any quest are the Bounty Hunter and Vestal.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As for the graphics and sound, I have found that they are appropriate for the\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">Lovecraftian\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">atmosphere the studio seems to be going for. It may be just me, but I think the narrator (voiced by <\/span><a style=\"background-color: white; font-size: 1rem;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wayne_june\">Wayne June<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">)kind of sounds like Morgan Freeman. At any moment, I am waiting on him to start talking about Andy and his time at Shawshank. I really don&#8217;t mind it at all though, who wouldn&#8217;t want that magic voice to narrate everything? The music is great!\u00a0Normally I listen to music when I play most games to break up the sometimes monotonous loops. In this case, I find myself wanting to have it playing!<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">Full props to\u00a0<\/span><a style=\"font-size: 1rem; background-color: #ffffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/stuartchatwood.com\/\">Stuart Chatwood<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0for nailing the score! The graphics are dark, gritty and really attribute to the sense of darkness.\u00a0 I really <\/span>appreciate<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0the hand drawn look and it just goes to show you graphics don&#8217;t have to be cutting (clipping?) edge to make a game enjoyable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>[yasr_overall_rating size=&#8221;medium&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>In this day and age of dumpy AAA game producers and half assed releases it&#8217;s nice to see such good work come out of a smaller independent studio.\u00a0 Larger studios, take note: this is how you make a fun and engaging game. It&#8217;s an added bonus that this actually got its start on Kickstarter!<\/p>\n<p>Overall I think if you are a fan of this type of game or you would like a challenge with great atmosphere, you should definitely give it a try.\u00a0 <em>I rate this a solid 4 madness inducing visions out of 5.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><em>Images used with permission from\u00a0Red Hook Studios Inc.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this quick review, I am taking a look at the game Darkest Dungeon by Red Hook Studios. From their website: &#8220;Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike RPG about &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crowdfunding","category-entertainment","category-gaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toughcrowdreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}