Your ancestor has messed up big time. His place is now host to a huge monster that has unleashed its dark and twisted venom across the land, leaving only one terrified Hamlet untouched, most likely out of amusement at their futile attempts to keep its clutches at bay.

All kinds of foul creatures and rogue men now plague the estate, a letter your ancestor has sent you pleads for you to come back and use the Hamlet as a starting ground to build a last stand against unholy horrors. Your enemy has almost all the land, resources and a fantastic army at their disposal to snuff any attempts.

You have a kleptomanic Crusader and a cheat of a Highwayman, both bribed by your coin to try and survive guiding you through the roads to even GET to the shattered Hamlet in one piece.

You look over the terrain. The Hamlet is in shambles, you rely on whatever crazy mercenaries make their way here on promise of glory, money and adventure. No super-human heroes in divine armour, no immense power or tricks. Pure fate and your expertise on monster killing (psst, you don't have any!).

This isn't going to be easy.


Darkest Dungeon is a pretty amazing turn based dungeon crawler and micro management game where you have to be more focused on surviving than winning. Everything is stacked against you pretty much the whole way along and you need to know when to call it quits and bring heroes back alive.

The art style is something I love immensely. It's gritty, dramatic and pretty grim, everything that the game is about. This isn't a vacation, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

People will die, sometimes things will seem to be unfair, but it's down to you to make the most of what you have. Push back against the darkness, take what you've learned from each plunge into the depths and don't let the sacrifices of the many be in vain.

This game has recently had extra options for difficulty adjustments (turning off gradual stress, turning off heart attacks etc.) so you can either play with some of the features on at a time and then include additional ones when you feel you've gotten comfortable, or just not use them, up to you. On a personal level I find the game is playable with all the features on (currently week 10+ on a new save and no deaths so far, that's not gonna last long though haha) but some players may find it's a bit much at once so it's nice to have the options.

A lot of the bad stuff can be mitigated by prepping and cutting your losses, fleeing a dungeon with at least one person alive (though you should really be trying to leave the second you think things are going south) will have them carry back whatever they've found back to the Hamlet, so it's not a complete loss.

The stress mechanic is pretty neat, a lot of the time stress will be the killer rather than health. Again, all down to management. Prioritise taking down monsters that will give you the hardest time. Figure out what items to bring. Learn what heroes work best together as they come to the Hamlet, soon you'll be making trips with a dedicated taskforce in mind. Nothing feels greater than going into a dungeon that kicked your butt before and coming out on top because your monster knowledge and team planning paid off.

If you love a strong challenge and the feeling of being a lone rebellion against a great threat, then I can't recommend this game enough, get it and start that love-hate relationship with stress inducing monsters today!