Finding Fun In the Dark.

There was this controversial update in the early access days of Darkest Dungeon, the Lovecraftian dungeon crawler gem released back in 2015, and it revolved around corpses [1]. For those who have not played it, Darkest Dungeon’s core combat loop is centered around a four-man rank system. Four party members on the left arrayed right to left, one through four, and four monsters on the right arrayed left to right, one through four. Each hero and monster has a preferred position where they were the most effective and have specific attacks that can reach deeper enemy positions without having to first go through the unit in position one; so the challenge and fun of the game is in assembling a team and then using them to dismantle the enemy formation as efficiently as possible. Only one problem, players were just going down the line in numeric order. That was the dominant strategy at the time: to bring three heavy hitters and one healer who could all hit the front rank hard and turn the enemy formation into a conveyor belt [1]. This was not how Red Hook wanted players to play, but they could not deny the strategy's effectiveness, so they added a hitch to gameplay: corpses [1]. Now, whenever a monster dies, it leaves a corpse behind in its position, blocking that rank and preventing the rest of the row from moving up until the body decays or is destroyed. It was a simple, effective solution that elevated the gameplay, and people hated it [1]. So much so that Red Hook gave people the option to switch this feature off; however, they leave it on by default, and it’s on by default because that’s how they want you to play their game; because they think that feature is key to the fun [1].

In essence, Red Hook designed Darkest Dungeon as a Hard Fun type of game, where in the enjoyment comes from understanding and overcoming a complex or challenging problem. Team leads/ founders, Chris Bourassa and Tyler Sigman, have stated in an interview that a huge inspiration for this game was the work of H.P Lovecraft and that one of their design goals was to mechanically achieve the sense of cosmic insignificance that Lovecraft achieved through his writing, that is where the ‘fun’ comes from [1]. So, they crafted a system that is tilted against the player, one in which things can go wrong very fast, one where every foray into the dark draws your party closer and closer to madness, and one where, in the end, you will lose something vital as you are not but mice battling lions. The game demands a higher cognitive load from the player because it does not set out to entertain its players; it sets out to engage them. Therefore, to maintain this sense of uneasy dread from a mechanical angle, they need combat to have few, if any, easy solutions to build that proper Hard Fun structure while also staying true to their artistic theme of cosmic horror [3].   

Three core elements form the foundation of Darkest Dungeon, creating the challenge for the player to engage with. The first is combat, where strategy runs up against luck as you rage against horrors, that could end a run in two rounds if you’re not careful; this is where the corpse system comes into play, as discussed before. Second is the Resolve system, the quantitative system the game uses to show how mentally stable your party members are as they are subject to a never-ending horror show. Third, the Affliction system: permanent buffs or debuffs a character receives after returning home as reminders of the terrible things they’ve seen or the resolve they showed against the nightmare. Each of these systems goes into creating that Lovecraftian sense of insignificance, so the game isn’t just saying that you are a small thing crawling around the ruined halls of beings far beyond mortal comprehension; it also proves just how small we really are by how brutal the gameplay is and how no one escapes the dungeon unscathed. These are all things that don’t seem fun on the surface. But fun isn’t a hard and fast concept with a single definition. In the traditional sense of the word meaning enjoyable, lighthearted pleasure, Darkest Dungeons isn’t fun; however, using Raph Koster definition from his Theory of Fun GDC talk as  “a neurochemical reward to encourage us to keep trying [2]” shifts the conversation noticeably.

For all its punishing systems and difficulty, Red Hook wants you to beat their game. They want you to understand why your strategy isn’t working; they want you to experiment with team comp to reach multiple positions in combat and tackle challenges non-linearly. The ‘fun’ of their game is the mastery of its system and the sense of pride you feel when you can pull a victory from the jaws of defeat because you know this game inside and out [3]. That is why Red Hook put corpses into the game, and that’s why the feature is turned on by default: because what drives the player's curiosity in Darkest Dungeon is the pursuit of understanding [2]. That is what compels players to face the Darkest Dungeon, and it is what challenges them to be creative with the rule set they have before them [2]. The game even starts with a message from the devs telling players not to give up if something seems impossible because their game is about making the best of a difficult situation, even if that means being pushed into unfamiliar and dangerous territory.

[4]

As a little anecdotal evidence to this previous point, one of my favorite units in this game is the Abomination, a werewolf-type character that can shift between his support-centered human form and his DPS monster form. But switching between human and monster freaks out the rest of the party, raising their Stress, which could lead to something terrible if left unchecked, and while the monster form deals a lot more damage and has tools to keep himself in his preferred position, he can only reach the front two enemy ranks. So, once he kills those two enemies, he’s stuck smacking corpses while the back-rank monsters bombard the party with afflictions safely behind the mangled remains of their hideous companions. To remedy this, without turning off corpses, I bring heroes that can heal Stress to keep morale up when the Abomination transforms, and I bring someone who can get into the deeper ranks or clear corpses fast. Personally, my favorite combination is Abomination, Hellion, Bounty Hunter, and Occultist for shorter missions where Stress is less of an issue, swapping Hellion for Jester for longer missions. This way, Abomination can do his thing and maim the enemy ranks while Occultist bombards the back ranks with his spells, which then combo nicely into Bounty Hunter, who gains bonuses to Marked targets, while Hellion plays the army knife role of being able to whittle down anyone at any rank, with Jester providing buffs and Stress heals so the offensive heroes can clear combat faster. A combination I would have never discovered had the game not made playing Abomination difficult. Because while trickly to build – especially in older versions when religious characters would refuse to party with him – the satisfaction of piloting a bile-fueled death machine that rips through the enemy like wet tissue paper is a high that cannot be beaten; one that could not have been achieved if the game didn’t put its foot down and make a firm artistic and mechanical decision which said: “If you want to play this way, fine. But there will be consequences.”

That might not sound like a good time, and I will be frank, it is frustrating when the game throws a spanner in the machine, and all you can do is watch as the engine seizes and slowly explodes. But when it does erupt, you always know what went wrong. I knew that I lost the Hag fight because I didn’t have a stress healer on that mission, and the Abomination got trapped in the pot too many times, so my main DPS was out of commission, and my off DPS couldn’t do enough damage to make up for the loss; and yes, in that moment I didn’t want to play anymore and left the game. Revisiting it now, however, I want to take another shot at it. Start a new campaign, take the knowledge I’ve accumulated in my past runs, and charge into the dark to beat back the monstrosities that hide there, for that is the ‘fun’ of high cognitive load games that are more art than entertainment [2]. Art challenges you, questions you, and demands that you meet it on its own level to glean satisfaction from it [2]. A big ask, yes, but the commitment is worth it, for there are few other games I know of that encapsulate the paralyzing terror of the unknown and challenge the player to face the rolling black abyss without forgetting that the abyss is immortal. The High Priest Cthulhu was not defeated by mere sailors when freed from the dreaming city of R'lyeh; he was only hindered. Much in the same way that the Heart of Darkness is not killed by the party who braves the Darkest Dungeon, it is only put back to sleep. For there is no stopping the Old Gods; there is only the slow march towards the inevitable night that we may postpone but never truly escape. That is the true horror of Lovecraft, and it is what Red Hook has masterfully translated into their game by finding the ‘fun’ in raging against the dying of the light, corpses and all.

Citations

[1] Calandra, Nick. Darkest Dungeon Documentary - It Would Suck To Be A Hero. YouTube/ Darkest Dungeon Documentary - It Would Suck To Be A Hero, The Escapist , 27 Apr. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thQvE6XEmis. Accessed 4 Sept. 2024.

[2] Koster, Raph. “A Theory of Fun 10 Years Later.” GDC Vault, 2012, www.gdcvault.com/play/1016632/A-Theory-of-Fun-10.

[3] Lazzaro, Nicole. “Nicole Lazzaro | Games and the Four Keys to Fun: Using Emotions to Create Engaging Design.” YouTube, YouTube, 24 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEmNRRRqgNc.

[4] Rebock, Jesse, and Jevon says: “Game Review: Darkest Dungeon.” Another Head Full Of Fantasy, 8 Mar. 2016, redamnesia.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/game-review-darkest-dungeon/.