Deep into that darkness peering…
Red Hook Studios has announced that Darkest Dungeon II will end its early access run on Epic Games Store and enter the light on May 8, 2023. The game is a follow-up to 2016’s Darkest Dungeon, a title focused on the mental rigors of dungeon delving.
Rather than simply focus on being an adventuresome RPG, Darkest Dungeon gave your party the glossy sheen of human weaknesses. Instead of being buff and daftly courageous heroes, your group would be affected by the horrors that they saw in the gloom beneath the earth.
Darkest Dungeon II continues the series’ take on stress management but makes wholesale changes to a lot of the system. A focus for a lot of pre-release information is the wagon that you drive to travel the game world, but the combat system has been reworked. A lot has changed alongside that, and a many players voiced their disappointment in 2021 when the early access period launched. While I can’t personally speak to any of the changes that have been made or the quality, I have heard that the devs have been active about collecting feedback and tweaking the game based on that. Hopefully, this meant that the final release in a few months will meet expectations.
I didn’t play the first Darkest Dungeon because people told me that it’s really depressing. Maybe I should give it a go once I give my therapist a proper warning.
If you’re unsure about the changes made, a demo has been made available as part of Steam Next Fest. Although the Early Access was exclusive to Epic Games Store, the full title will be available on both EGS and Steam when it launches on May 8, 2023.
