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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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