Yesterday, indie developer Red Hook Studios released a rather sizable update for its gothic horror roguelike RPG Darkest Dungeon named the Inhuman Bondage Update (possibly a macabre twist on the title of William Somerset Maugham’s 1915 bildungsroman Of Human Bondage). The centerpiece of this new chapter is the Abomination, a new hero class who can switch between human and bestial forms at will. As described on the update’s landing page:
The Abomination, designed by our Lord Tier Kickstarter backer, Josh L, aka “MaxKojote” is a twisted concept indeed! A brooding and desperate man, the Abomination has been outcast, branded and imprisoned due to the “sickness” that lies within him. Completely unlike any other hero to wander into the Hamlet thus far, the Abomination can switch between two forms during combat: human and beast. Each form has different combat skills, so you’ll need to figure out the strengths of each. But beware: the Abomination unsettles religious heroes so much that they refuse to serve with him. Additionally, the emergence of a beast in combat is a stressful event for other party members! Fortunately, they recover somewhat when the Abomination returns to his brooding (but human) self.
The update also introduces two new enemies, both of which were also designed by Darkest Dungeon’s Kickstarter backers: The Collector and The Madman. The Madman joins monster packs in random regions of the game and shouts prophecies of doom at your party, inflicting status ailments that debilitate their mental health. The Collector, meanwhile, puts a spooky spin on RPG convention by calling forth the spirits of your deceased heroes to aid him in combat.
Red Hook Studios has also tweaked certain mechanical aspects of Darkest Dungeon to accompany the update. Among them are revisions to the game’s Stress system and a mechanic intended to discourage stalling tactics in battle; protracted conflicts will attract more monsters and possibly lead to a slippery slope of death and despair should a player take too long to finish a fight. According to the update’s web page, Red Hook believes that “the game should be a tightrope walk the whole way through.”
The full patch notes can be found here.
Darkest Dungeon is Red Hook Studios’ first project. The dark fantasy dungeon crawler was funded on Kickstarter last year and places the player in the role of a lord who has recently acquired a vast estate innocuously called The Hamlet. The Hamlet, however, is filled with forbidding dungeons and terrifying monsters. The player must hire bands of adventurers to clear these dungeons out in a roguelike fashion, with combat taking place in a turn-based environment. Along the way, heroes will inevitably undergo varying degrees of Stress, from paranoia to dementia to heart attacks. It is up to the player to not only manage his heroes’ equipment and keep them alive, but to also keep their stress levels intact through using items and infirmaries on the player’s estate. Stress can often lead heroes to an untimely demise or put them out of combat as they recover from their ordeals. But in some cases, Stress ailments can become sources of strength and empower heroes against certain challenges, often at the cost of another weakness.
Darkest Dungeon is slated to release on January 19, 2016 for Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita platforms.