Game design observation for Darkest Dungeon
Darkest Dungeon is a rouge-lite turn-based role playing dungeon crawler.
Team building
17 classes to choose from
7 combat abilities and 7 camping skills but only 4 can be active from each
many different trinkets, only 2 trinkets per class
Rouge-lite
random encounters in rooms
different quirks for classes
random trinkets/items from successful encounters
Crawler / RPG
forking dungeons
allows naming the characters
Darkest Dungeon provides an addictive gameplay loop of managing your heroes stress, health,
and abilities while exploring different dungeons. Just like in Slay the Spire, you can achieve
synergies with your party's skills and build different team compositions. Difficulty increases with
the levels of your characters, and only with the highest-level characters can you tackle the
enemies and final boss in the "darkest dungeon" (last dungeon). After 100 hours of playing and a
few finished runs, I can attest to the ramping difficulty and the great sadness of losing your
characters. But even after finishing the game a few times already, I am still drawn to it, like a
moth to light. Maybe the great modding community contributes to it because the game is easily
modable.