So, a while ago, I kickstart funded Darkest Dungeon, which is now available on steam. Apparently it's not the final release yet, but I guess that for some indie games nowadays the eternal playable beta on steam that you pay money for is the new version 1.0.

The premise of the game is recruiting adventurers to reclaim a befouled estate from some Lovecraftian horror. The adventurers are randomly generated but have character classes. The special thing about the game is that the characters develop psychological disorders from the stress of their dangerous occupation and from exposure to eldritch horror. They can develop serious disorders while on quest, such as masochism, paranoia, and other things. The game is difficult, there is permadeath, but there are always new heroes you can recruit so you won't get a game over just from losing your characters.

I actually think this game has really good role playing. I come to remember certain favorite characters and as they develop mental disorders it's like they are developing as characters. The characters also have little text boxes where they say things based on their current situation. It's pretty cute.

There is also dramatic graphic novel type narration for common events in the game, which I think is hilarious and awesome.

The game is hard but a lot of fun. My gut feeling is that they need to tweak the game balance a little bit to make the game simultaneously difficult but not too difficult, which is a hard balance to make when you are trying to have a game that is simultaneously winnable but also portraying sanity-rending eldritch horror.

Still, I had a lot of fun last night. The hours passed with me barely aware of them passing.

Not sure I need a game that revolves around player characters growing by gaining PTSD's

I got real life for that already.

Might be fun as a one off though.

Was playing for a few hours last night and I noticed that the game Oregon Trails you. If your adventurers are not getting sufficiently traumatized and beat up, the rate at which they consume rations greatly accelerates and the rate at which torches run out also greatly accelerates.

I get that the point of the game is supposed to be Lovecraftian horror, but I really don't like the Oregon Trail style difficulty adjustment. All it means that instead of planning in the normal manner by carefully taking enough supplies, you take just enough to barely make it because you know that the rate of consumption will then be lower. It just becomes silly metagaming instead of normal planning of an expedition.

In general, while I have been enjoying the game, it seems like it's designed to be highly random so as to simultaneously defeat long term planning but also to allow for amazing desperate saves when the chips are down. So at the end of the day, it feels the game is going to behave erratically anyway and it's more like a random story than anything else.

I love the game, but the extreme randomness feels a bit like the gristle in my steak.

Wow, the game seems to have gotten a lot harder since their last update. The problem is that now it rends *my* sanity while I play! I kind of feel tense instead of relaxed afterwards...