So, I had two ideas that I wanted to talk about on Darkest Dungeon. One of them was what I covered
last time, on how it could potentially mislead people into thinking it's meant to be conquered. And now,
I want to talk about how Darkest Dungeon succeeds and fails in how it handles mental health. I love
Darkest Dungeon. But I think it's most interesting parts are where it falters. So, uh, sorry to the devs.
I promise I love your game.
So, mental health is a huge part of Darkest Dungeon, and it's the biggest threat to your party's
wellbeing. Physical wounds and maladies (besides illness) will soon fade, but mental ramifications
stay for much, much longer, and can have debilitating effects. Your party members might become
terrified of the dark, suspicious and paranoid, or so incredibly stressed, they'll suffer a heart attack and
die right there. It's perhaps the most central part of the game, so let's break it down and see how it
fares.
First, let's just look at the two main ways it handles this: stress and afflictions. Stress is a stat that
accumulates on each member as you delve into the dungeon, a number from 0-200. At 100, the
member will have their resolve tested, and may either break down (Paranoia as an example) or come
out stronger and virtuous. These effects can be dissipated by bringing stress down in town. The other
manner it occurs in is in afflictions, that don't go away after fights. Things like being terrified of beasts,
or compulsive. They can be gotten rid of, but only at the sanitarium.
Darkest Dungeon is a two headed beast when it comes to how it represents these things. On one
hand, the effects are real and accurate. On the other, when it comes to the aftermath of dealing with
it, that's when things get a bit more iffy.
But let's take the good first. The actual ramifications and impact of mental health is quite well shown,
at least in my opinion. It struck me how it would often show how debilitating even benign sounding
ideas could be. Compulsive characters would check everything, to their detriment. Some people
will have issues functioning at max in certain environments or when faced with certain threats. The
ways that one's brain rubs up against the world is very real.
As well, stress is also well handled (for the most part). It slowly builds and builds as you go about
your tasks, and eventually can overtake you and severely impact your functioning in a life and death
scenario. Stress doesn't go away afterward, and you have to deal with it somehow. Often the only
option isn't a very healthy one, but you've gotta, otherwise it'll destroy your heroes. And it never goes
away, really. Every time you make someone go in, they will get stressed and will get worse. You
can only ever try to smartly deal with it. That's pretty real.
So that sounds all peachy keen, right? Well, yeah, but there is a lot wrong with how they show mental
health in this game. While I understand that much of it is trying to keep with the medieval, macabre,
horror theme, I can't help but seriously notice that much of how they frame dealing with mental health,
is, to put it bluntly, incorrect and plays into some rather unfortunate ideas.
Let's start with the afflictions. Right away, my main beef with them is that they're presented as
character flaws, moral failings, issues to be fixed. Having uncontrollable thoughts is presented on the
same level as being a "known cheat". That is a view of mental health that is quite frankly outdated and
harmful. Someone hasn't "failed" or is a worse person because they're struggling. That isn't to say I
have an issue with the idea of dealing with them...
What I have an issue with is how you deal with them in the game, as in, you can't often make these
things go away. You can't just go to some hospital and ask them to cure your compulsions, or fix
your attention issues. In reality, dealing with this is often a lifelong management process, where
treatment is making the issue so manageable it doesn't impact you anymore. In Darkest Dungeon
you just go to the hospital and then boom, suddenly you're all "right" again, all "proper".
The history of mental health treatment is long and sordid, but in a nutshell, so much harm has been
done by this mindset of "make them normal again". That normality is a hurtful lie, and we should be
accepting how people just work differently and work with them, and not just try to hide them.
Darkest Dungeon ends up saying "fix your workers, and if you can't, throw them aside". It implies
that really, all you need is a week in a hospital and you'll be right as rain. Simply put, no. That's not how
it works, and that's not how it should work.
There also comes an issue with the conditions that result from high stress, as I mentioned earlier.
While I feel the effects are shown well, dealing with them is ridiculously too easy for my tastes. You
simply get your stress down in town and they will vanish, no lingering effects whatsoever. I hope the
issue is quite self evident. You can't just "destress" paranoia or things like that, the effects can linger
and haunt you. A night at the bar is a bandage. Not a solution.
My other primary issue is with the virtue system. I think this is great mechanically... not so much if
you're looking at it through this lens. People don't just "overcome" stress and anxiety and get better.
It's a long, hard, strenuous process with a lot of hardship and challenge. Insinuating that people can
somehow perform at their best under immense mental stress is a bit off.
Darkest Dungeon ends up being a game that carefully shows the pains of mental health, but fails
to show the struggles to fix it properly. It sacrifices accurate portrayal for gameplay purposes, and in
the process misrepresents quite a few things. At the end of the day, the game ends up treating
mental health in a very haphazard manner, and ends up framing it as some evil failing we need to
correct. It shows it well. But it comments on it harmfully.
I've been playing some Darkest Dungeon lately, a game where things will go wrong, the odds will
forever be against you, and where you will always have to make the best of any bad situation. Always.
I've been having a blast preparing as much as I can, and then still having to think on the fly. Engaging
stories developed with each run, like my plague doctor who kept getting herself into trouble by
compulsively checking every nook and cranny, or my highwayman who dodged 3 traps in a row. The
mood was always dark and struggling, and at the end of it all I'd always felt like I'd contented against
horrific odds, often at great cost. There's no experience quite like it, and I was hooked on the world.
Which is why it was hugely surprising for me to go online and see people complaining about it all.
It's always a pastime of mine to see what others think of a game I like, and I was honestly rather
taken aback at the level of annoyance. People talked about how the "RNG was too harsh" and how
"progress always felt tenuous". Those things, however, where what I enjoyed most? RNG would always
give me the chance of a harrowing run that I'd have to fight tooth and nail for, and progress was always
by a bare margin. Why was I loving these things, and others hating them?
Well. I can't speak for every other person, of course, but I do suspect I may have an idea of why. We're
gonna talk about player expectations and mindset.
So, I think the first important thing to lay out is: what exactly am I talking about here? I'm talking about
things like how you view events in games, how you view mechanics, and what you expect out of
these things as a result. Is losing a party member a crushing blow or an expected, minor annoyance?
When you reach safety, how big of a deal is it? What do you expect will occur going forward? It's all
in the answers to those questions.
Obviously every player is gonna be different, primarily because everyone has different things they
enjoy in games, and are gonna be looking for different things and expecting different things based
off what they know going in. However, there are things that developers can do to get you into the
kind of though process that's best while you're playing their game.
For a great example of this, check out a game with a similar sort of style: Bloodborne. The devs
wanted players to feel like hunters, carving their way through and staying on the offensive. The
problem is that the safest way forward is often the slow, careful, but ultimately boring route. In such
a punishing game, that option would obviously be attractive to many. You can see things in the game
meant to push you towards a fast and aggressive style everywhere. The rally system lets you
gain back health if you strike soon after taking a hit. You can use your health for bullets, so you always
have an important offensive option and are never truly at risk of running out of ammo. Enemies
will rush you down, and your lack of defense forces you to counter with an offense of your own. The
entire game is designed to make you want to push forward, take risks, and feel the rush of combat.
Or take another game I love, Mark of the Ninja. This is a game totally based around stealth, and was
crafted for the most enjoyable and fluid experience being one of an unseen enigma. In order to make
sure people understood this, they flat out just removed a complex combat system, because the
mere existence of it made players think it was an intended playstyle. In the final game, combat is
finicky and hugely unsafe, which means most players will try to avoid it at all costs. It's the mindset
and expectations the developers want.
So. With that concept in mind, and knowing how it can work, let's look at Darkest Dungeon again. Why
did all those people from before have such negative words towards the aspects of the game I loved?
I think it's because the game trips up in one key area of how it sets your expectations: it makes you
think you're meant to win a run.
See, my main difference going into the game was that I had someone tell me that: "Everything is going
to go wrong at some point. That's the point". I went into the game with a certain kind of mindset: one
where losses are expected and will happen. The point of the RNG, is, I think, so you never know
quite how badly a run will go. You're never supposed to have a "good" foray into the dungeon. Rather,
your job is to mitigate your losses, because they will happen every time you delve in. I never
expected to win. I simply tried to make my wounds treatable.
The game does do a lot to try to get you into this mindset. The developers were obviously trying to
emphasize this. The only thing that's free in this game is more people to send in. The graveyard is
front and center - people will die. The game flat out tells you "your heroes are expendable", and
you're able to cut your losses and retreat whenever. It's trying to make an engaging experience around
dealing with RNG and rolling with the punches.
Here's where the issue is, however. The game is very precise in other areas, with exact numbers.
Sometimes RNG will go in your favor and everything will go swimmingly. The game will give all the
signs of "nice job!" if a run goes well. Everything about the game besides the aesthetics gives you
the impression that this is a tactical, predictable system. The game tells you people are expendable.
But it still makes you think you're meant to try for a good outcome on each individual run.
And I don't think that's what the developers wanted people to think! I think the game is at its best when
you're mitigating, not winning. It meshes with the atmosphere amazingly and leads to a game where
you're always scrambling to make sure things don't totally fall apart. But, if you're going in thinking
that your goal is to make it through properly, you're going to get nothing but frustrating RNG, and a
game more interested in kicking you down than testing you.
I don't think there's such a thing as playing a game "wrong", however, I do think there are ways of
approaching a game that will only ever chafe against your enjoyment of the experience. You'd have
a pretty miserable time if you were meant to play a horror game carefully, but the game keeps trying
to draw you into an action mindset. People are getting an idea of what they think a game is like, and
when that's not quite how it works, that's gonna cause problems.
So. How could Darkest Dungeon have done better? I'm no game designer, but I can pitch a few ideas.
First and foremost, have the prompt for "you can retreat if you like" pop up the first couple of times your
party is roughed up, not just the first time. Knowing you can cut your losses anytime is a real help for
some people. Better signposting about how losses are a part of the game would also be great.
Maybe the tutorial could start you off with 3 party members, and one of them will always be killed off,
getting that idea in your head from square one. Or perhaps some more specific language could
be used during the tutorials as well, telling you that you are fixing problems, but it'll never be enough.
These are just ideas, and honestly I don't want to undermine the work of the team behind it, Darkest
Dungeon is a great experience. Think of this as a sort of "make it work even better" thing rather than
a takedown of the game. If nothing else, take away that you need to carefully consider what every
part of the game is telling the player. Even one part of it giving the wrong idea can have consequences.
Furi is the kind of fast, punchy action I love, because it wants to use its fast, punchy action for a good
purpose. Most other games will look at enemy design, dialogue, and attacks from a strictly gameplay
point of view. "What's the most engaging to play?" is the driving question, and usually the safest and
smartest question to ask. These kind of games often look to make their mechanics the most "artistic"
and most fleshed out, and that's a good choice.
What if, however, a game asked "what's the most engaging to interact with"? What makes the best
scene, not just best to play. Well, Furi. This small game uses its mechanics to make the bosses you
fight memorable, unique, and full of character. While it may sacrifice a bit of gameplay depth, Furi sticks
to its guns and plays with consistent ideas and mechanics to make characters out of each obstacle.
So let's start by asking the question: what are these mechanics?
1. Projectiles. Bosses in Furi will utilize energy-like shots, in the same vein as an arcade shoot-em'-up.
They might be small, they might be large, they might be impossible to destroy, they might give health
pickups. But they all have them.
2. AOE attacks. Energy waves, blasts, cones, you name them. They're basically just areas of the
battlefield that will become unsafe to touch for a while.
3. Melee. Most bosses will get up close and personal at some point or another. They'll go for direct
attacks, to be parried, or short range AOE, which must be dodged.
Those are the three standard types of attacks, which is why we're going to start with how bosses will
bring their own mechanics to it. Every boss in Furi will use the three above methods of pain.
However. Bosses will bring their own unique scenarios very often, and breaking from the standard
leaves an impression.
Take The Burst. She'll start the first three phases of her fight by running away, staying invisible, and
shooting at you with a sniper rifle. That kills you in one hit. This gives the impression of a very
dangerous, elusive person that prefers to hide in the shadows, and takes great pleasure in it. This is
further emphasized by her low health bar when you do catch up to her. She's not fighting you head on
unless she has to (unlike every other boss) and that difference fleshes out what kind of a person
and fighter she is.
Or The Strap, who has maybe my favourite fakeout in the game. She'll run away, and you'll be left alone for
a good chunk of a minute. It's quiet. Unnerving. You wonder if something's gone wrong. Then, all of a
sudden, she'll jump out and you have to fend her off with a quick time event. No other boss leaves you
alone for so long, and no other boss catches you off guard like this. I was laughing at how inventive this
was for the rest of the fight, and it certainly serves to show her feral, crafty, and uncontrollable nature.
Furi is never content to just ask "what's the most interesting in gameplay". I'd argue that being left alone
for about 30 seconds isn't the most engaging thing. But it leaves an impact, an impression, a character
in your head, and this philosophy of shines through in the rest of the game, even in the standard
mechanics.
Look at The Scale, who has slow and meandering attacks, that will also mess with your vision if you're
hit. It's toxic. Debilitates you. Makes you panic. This is a character who wants to slowly kill you and
torture you, and it's not just shown in what he says.
Or, perhaps The Line, who has a first phase with reflecting shields, that send projectiles at you when you
shoot them. And later, he'll freeze time, including your bullets if you shoot, and you can then take
damage if you run into them. He is making you your own worst enemy, and almost feels as though he's
trying to teach you that.
And finally, maybe my favourite boss, The Hand. He has a shield to reflect your projectiles. He'll move as
quick or as slowly as he pleases. He's got oddly timed melee attacks designed to make you parry too
quick. And halfway through the fight he changes his fighting style completely. This is a crafty, trained,
motivated, and deadly warrior who fights using everything he's got. That leaves an impression.
This is how the game operates, and it's really really great at it. After I finished every fight, I was able to
say "they were a vicious sadist" or "they were a crafty strategist" and I knew that, not because I'd been
told, but because I'd played through their personalities and characters. I had fought and killed people
and creatures with past lives, current wants, personal reasons and motivations. And that is... well, I
think it's pretty neat!
This isn't to say every game should strive for this. Furi sacrifices some raw depth because it sticks so
closely to the core 3 mechanics I mentioned earlier. It's not a combat system on the level of Bayonetta
or Devil May Cry. Some bosses end up being not as satisfying to play because of their dedication to
character-infused attacks (curse you, The Line).
But by and large, this game isn't trying to be the deepest, or most consistently well designed to play. It's
trying to get you to engage with the world through gameplay. And though it stumbles once or twice, this
is a driving force of design I want to see more of. Furi is a great showing.
.
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(Addenum: You might have seen me rail against games that shame you or limit you for choosing easier
difficulties, and Furi does just this. While I'll go a tad easier on the devs since I'm pretty sure the
difficulty was a consideration for the story and world design to a certain extent, this is still wholly
unacceptable and completely exclusionary to people with limited time or accessibility issues. Tell us
the difficulty will enhance it, advise people to play on "normal" if you want, but for god's sake, don't lock
off progression or achievements for it. This is a major mark against the game and I don't want to let this
go unsaid, even if I think the rest of the game is brilliant.)
