[I think the battle royale connection is a bit distant here, and it’s a bit too broad a starting point. As I understand, Dark and Darker is more of an extraction shooter, especially if you’re comparing it to Hunt: Showdown. Sure, there’s some BR DNA here, and you can argue it’s descended from BR, but I think you can be more specific. Describe the extraction shooter and how it’s core premise works, or begin with an anecdote of an experience you had in the game].
I was sprinting down a dungeon corridor the other day when a thought occurred to me. One of my teammates was being stabbed to death by a half naked monk, and my other friend was being eaten by spiders. I could, and arguably should, have turned around to help them out, but I was carrying a lot of treasure at the time. So, just as any reasonable person would do, I leapt through a convenient portal and made my escape, leaving my two comrades to fend for themselves. It was at that moment that I realised Dark and Darker could be the game that catapults the “extraction shooter” into the mainstream.
I don’t play a lot of competitive multiplayer games, but I have spent the last few years dabbling with these so-called extraction shooters, games where players compete to achieve an objective, and then escape (or extract) with the bg prize. Games of this persuasion are typically skill focused, tense, and unforgiving. It’s a format that’s been around a little while now, and one that I feel is set to take off in a big way.
My personal favourite among this new wave of PvPvE extraction shooters is Crytek’s Hunt: Showdown, a game about small teams competing to take down a boss monster, and then escape with the loot or “bounty”. It’s certainly not a game for the faint of heart and takes a long time to master, but that’s kind of what I like about it. Players generally start far away from one another, and sticking to the shadows, making as little noise as possible is often the key to victory. Everyone dies in just one or two hits too, so even a high-level player with superior equipment can do very little if taken unawares.
It’s a game of rising tension that rewards skill and patience, and since I enjoy it so much, it was only natural that Dark and Darker would catch my eye during Steam Next Fest. The stated intent of Dark and Darker is to build a hardcore, unforgiving PvPvE dungeon crawler, built on the heritage of old-school fantasy RPGs. I love all that stuff and the PvPvE – teams of three exactly like in Hunt – so I had to check out the demo build released this month. It’s been racking up some impressive Twitch numbers, consistently being in the top ten most watched games on the platform, so it must be doing something right.
Here’s the basic premise. Up to six teams of three players spawn in a dungeon full of zombies, spiders, and other ghouls, competing to see how much treasure they can gather, then escaping through a randomly spawning portal. Games last 10 minutes, and the map shrinks over time. The dungeons (as the name of the game suggests) are extremely gloomy, so moving carefully and using the darkness to your advantage is paramount. There’s not a lot an enemy player can do if you pop up behind them and bash them over the head with an iron mace. So far, so Hunt: Showdown.
The big difference is that Dark and Darker incorporates an array of dungeon-crawling and RPG ideas that give the game a completely different feel. There are, for instance, six different classes you can play as: Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, Wizard, Barbarian, and Cleric. Each one has different base stats and their own unique equipment and abilities. The Cleric can revive and heal teammates, the Ranger can place traps, and the Barbarian deals double damage with two-handed weapons.
Racing towards the portals laden with treasures and new equipment, with an enemy party hot on our heels, was an incredible rush.
As well as searching for treasure, you need to keep your eye out for Diablo-style loot, weapons, armour, and equipment that affect a variety of stats. Your strength affects your maximum HP and your attack power, your agility affects your movement and attack speed, and so on and so on. It’s almost like having to build a character on the fly while fending off skeletons and undead horrors.
You can also choose from a variety of perks and abilities that allow you to design a build that works for you. I was playing as a ranger and got a lot of use out of an ability that massively increased my rate of fire with my bow, allowing me to get two or three shots off before an enemy could close distance and engage me in hand-to-hand combat.
Overall, it’s a fantastic idea and lends itself perfectly to producing unique moments that really stay with you. Racing towards the escape portals, laden with treasures and new equipment, with an enemy party hot on our heels, was an incredible adrenaline rush, and since there’s no guarantee that three portals will spawn (and each member of your party needs one to escape) the tension is always high. Do you turn and face the enemy so that your friends can escape? Or do you split up and risk running down a dead end in the hope of finding another way out? Dark and Darker forces interesting decisions on you all the time.
There are still a number of things that need to be changed for the game to realise its full potential. My big issue is the lack of pacing. Unlike in Hunt, the maps are very small, and you’re basically thrust into the action straight away. After five or six games in a row, this gets a little cloying. One of the best things about Hunt is how the tension slowly rises until the big confrontation over the bounties (the treasure every team is looking to escape with). Dark and Darker feels a lot more chaotic, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but as it stands, there just aren’t enough peaks and troughs to keep things interesting over an extended period.
My second gripe is that either the starting weapons are too weak, or the AI mobs are way too strong. Upon death, you lose all your equipment and have to start over with basic armour and weapons, which would be fine if they were just a little bit more effective. I welcome the challenge, but when even the first enemies you encounter can take seven or eight blows before going down, it can make everything feel like a bit of a slog. Again, there are lessons to be learned from Hunt here, where the AI zombies go down easily enough, but cause problems in other ways, like giving away your position, or blocking off an escape route.
If these issues are addressed, then we might have a serious game on our hands. The central idea is bursting with potential, and it only needs a few tweaks to be a real hit. Dark and Darker is definitely one to watch.
