Risk Emotional Destruction In Darkest Dungeon

I’m about to tell you the most depressing story you’ll likely hear all week.  Sorry.

I had a friend several years ago that grew up wanting to be a cop, it’s all he wanted to do in his life.  He took the appropriate tests but didn’t do well enough to get accepted to the academy on a full ride.  To help make his dream come true he got a call center job and worked on the front lines for a couple years all the while saving every penny he could.  Once he had enough money he enrolled in the academy and killed it, he studied non-stop, worked out constantly, and eventually became one of the top graduates.  He got a job offer from a major central California department; all was well.

His first week on the job he and some other officers got called to a dumpy little house because there was a possible homicide.  As he searched the house he eventually made his way to a baby’s room.  Pulling back a pile of clothes he found a nearly decapitated infant that had been dead for several days.

Within a few months my friend was out of the force for good, had spiraled into a pretty nasty depression fueled by alcohol and dangerous behavior, and had pulled away from everyone he knew.  To this day he can’t talk about kids or the police without coming close to a breakdown.  The one dream he had in his life is now the source of unimaginable pain.

What’s all this doing on a gaming site?  Well, I give you Darkest Dungeon, a new game on Kickstarter from the developers at Red Hook Studios.  One of the things that Red Hook is trying to accomplish with Darkest Dungeon is to communicate the psychological stresses people go through when faced with the extraordinary circumstances most videogame heroes shrug off.  As you guide your band of heroes through Darkest Dungeons‘ roguelike gameplay they’ll be affected by the things they see and do in ways that go beyond taking damage and gaining experience points.  You’ll have to keep your team healthy in both body and mind while they delve into a darkening dungeon filled with increasingly difficult enemies.  It’s not just about brawny supermen and magical elves slicing their way through hordes of enemies, it’s characters dealing with the consequences of actions they choose to make.

At least in theory it is.

If Red Hook can pull off everything they have planned for Darkest Dungeon we’ll have an innovative looking, and playing, dungeon crawler with mechanics that signify a real maturing of the genre.  If you’d like to support Darkest Dungeon you can do so over on its Kickstarter page until March 13th.