The origin of Darkest Dungeon, a rogue-like,
turn-based dungeon crawler RPG, was very much a now or never moment between two friends
that shared a passion for game development. Chris Bourassa and Tyler Sigman first met
each other as colleagues at Backbone Entertainment in 2004. The following years they became good friends
and eventually started floating around the idea of making a game together. Unfortunately, they were far too busy with
other projects to focus on a game of their own. However, in the spring of 2013 both their
schedules opened up and they decided it was now or never as they âwerenât getting
any youngerâ, Chris said. Tyler and Chris used their personal savings
to set up their own game development studio called Red Hook Studios. Years prior to setting up their own studio,
they would come together to brainstorm about various game ideas, but the one they were
most captivated by was Darkest Dungeon. Tyler said they wanted to explore the real
struggles of being an adventurer. After a lot of preparation they had a pretty
good idea of what they wanted to accomplish with Darkest Dungeon well before development
officially began in April 2013. Chris took on the role of director and lead
artist, while Tyler would oversee the development as producer and lead game designer. The original concept for Darkest Dungeon started
out as a tile-based game where the playerâs party would move through dungeons from a top-down
perspective and the game would transition to a different viewpoint during combat. Chris said he didnât particularly like that
mechanic, but he and Tyler thought they had to design it that way, because thatâs how
turn-based RPGs traditionally work. Chris pointed out to Tyler that youâd get
tired of looking at characters' heads, which would make it harder to bond with them. So after a while Chris came up with the idea
of using a side-on viewpoint for every aspect of the game. This way players can really appreciate the
design of each party member and better connect with them. The two developers decided to double-down
on this and really get up and close with the characters during combat to show off the detailed
characteristics of both the heroes and enemies. Additionally this alternative perspective
was chosen to simulate a claustrophobic feeling and add more intimacy and intensity, as this
was more in line with the rest of the game. Another advantage of this more unique approach
was the significantly lower amount of artwork that had to be made by Chris, since he was
able to use the same designs for both the dungeon crawling and combat aspect. Their tight budget made the single viewpoint
not only a financially smart decision, but also one that would prove to be artistically
beneficial to the gameâs atmosphere. Chris and Tyler brainstormed about how this
change in perspective would affect combat. Heroes and enemies would now be placed in
a row and it was decided to use four-on-four formations on the battlefield. Tyler and Chris imagined a hero using a spear
to attack an enemy that was deep into the ranks, which led directly to the concept of
positioning. The idea behind this concept is the importance
of where heroes and enemies are placed on the battlefield and how this affects their
abilities. Tyler remembered playing The Bardâs Tale
where heroes are divided in two ranks, namely those in front and those in the back. The ones in the back could only hit with magical
or ranged attacks, while those in front had the ability to use melee weapons. During experimentation with this mechanic,
the studio discovered many different ways on how to make this four-on-four combat fun
and strategic. They didnât originally anticipate all the
interesting and strategic possibilities by increasing the number of characters on the
battlefield to four but it left them pleasantly surprised and reinforced the idea they were
onto something special. A small example of one those possibilities
is being pulled out of rank by an enemy attack, which might put that hero in a disadvantage. Itâs meant to encourage the player to strategize
more properly to either prevent these disadvantages or gain the system by figuring out how to
weaken the enemyâs position arrangement. The positioning added an extra layer of depth
to the combat and it made logical sense from a visual perspective as well. Chris explained that you wouldnât physically
be able to hit someone behind three other guys with a sword. It made it much easier for players to understand
what the creators were trying to simulate. Chris and Tyler were very excited about the
chance to work on a game that had no external compromises, something purely made by them,
for them, the way they wanted it to be. Though they still needed money to realize
the vision they had for Darkest Dungeon. In the hopes to receive funding they filed
an application with the Canadian Media Fund but sadly, the agency rejected their application. Despite this setback the two developers continued
development and originally figured it would take about 18 months to develop Darkest Dungeon. They knew they wouldnât be able to make
the dream version of their game without funding, so they set their sights on Kickstarter to
get another shot at raising money. Before launching their Kickstarter campaign
they came up with a strategy to ensure their funding goal this time around. The first step of their plan was to build
a fan following before the launch of the Kickstarter. To accomplish this they released the first
Darkest Dungeon trailer in October 2013, which received plenty of press coverage that drove
over 1,000 mailing list signups. Red Hook Studios was very aware how crucial
it was to get as much support as possible on day one of the campaign since this can
help you score higher on popularity indexes and lists, so just before day one of the campaign,
they sent out an email blast to their mailing list. In the email they emphasized the importance
of day one momentum and asked, if they were considering pledging in the first place, to
pledge on day one. Furthermore, they offered Kickstarter tier
previews and incentives to the mailing list subscribers. To give potential backers a reason to back
it now instead of waiting to see how Darkest Dungeon would turn out, Tyler and Chris decided
to provide great value and pre-order bonuses. Another strategy would be to offer heavy pre-order
discounts but both developers wanted to keep the core price so they opted to give backers
physical and in-game rewards instead. After releasing their first trailer, they
took the time to observe the press and concluded that merely launching a Kickstarter wouldnât
be enough to generate articles about their Darkest Dungeon campaign. To solve this, Red Hook Studios released a
second trailer to go along with the launch of the Kickstarter. Lastly, the studio did plenty of research
on what kind of tier rewards to include based on possible print costs, shipping and so on. For the most part their plan worked: mailing
list subscribers showed up in great numbers on day one and thanks to the second trailer
the Kickstarter campaign received some nice press coverage in its first week. However, there was one major setback: their
in-game exclusive items for the adventurer tiers and higher, created quite a lot of negative
feedback. According to Tyler, there were some heated
discussions about the ideology of offering in-game exclusive items. These discussions became a huge distraction
for the studio as people kept pushing to eliminate these exclusive rewards. Therefore, they decided to provide an official
update telling backers they would not change any tier rewards. Despite the negative comments resulting from
the in-game rewards, the Kickstarter was a huge success with well over 9,000 backers
pledging more than $300,000 going well over the original funding goal of $75,000. Besides successfully funding the game, the
Kickstarter also confirmed that the Darkest Dungeon concept resonated with gamers. People were very excited about the unique
affliction system and the psychological dangers of adventuring, as well as the fitting art
style. As mentioned before, Chris and Tyler wanted
to explore the psychological toll of adventuring and the affliction system is the core mechanic
behind this idea. As the playerâs party progresses through
dungeons and fights enemies, the charactersâ individual stress meter increases. When the meter reaches 100, heroes face an
affliction check and if they fail the check they receive a condition called an affliction,
which makes them less effective in combat and/or exploration. More often than not, a hero will fail the
affliction check but if they pass the check, theyâll receive a positive condition called
a Virtue which grants the hero several advantages. Stress levels can be managed by giving heroes
time off between missions and this can be done in several ways: letting heroes drink,
gamble, meditate, pray and more. Each activity has limited slots and each hero
has their own personal preferences on which activity they enjoy. The creators describe this aspect as a bit
of a board game in terms of trying to make the most of R&R between quests. The player basically acts as a team manager
that needs to consider the human factors of dungeon exploration, since characters can
break mentally under too much stress. On top of that, they also wanted to toy with
player agency and remind players that no matter how much they prepare before beginning a quest,
things can always go wrong and they never have full control over the events that can
transpire. The developers realized such an experience
wouldnât be for everyone but for Chris and Tyler, it was far more interesting to explore
what a player would do under certain hopeless conditions. âThatâs the DNA of the game; itâs punishing. Sometimes unfairly, and weâre looking at
some things to do with the RNG in general but part of it is intentional, that no matter
how well you plan, it can get away from you.â âPeople play different games for different
reasons, and in different moods. But for us this game has always been about
making the best of a bad or imperfect situation. Weâre testing playerâs abilities to think
at the point of disaster. Not everybodyâs going to be entertained
by that.â Chris and Tyler are big fans of classic RPGs
such as the previously mentioned The Bardâs Tale series, Eye of the Beholder and Ultima
Underworld; but also modern games like Diablo and Dark Souls. However, both have mentioned that many RPGs
lose sight of the human element. âSituations are presented as purely a playerâs
choice whether to face down a terrifying monster with only 1 HP left. We started asking: how would the hero feel? In addition, we wanted to make something that
stood in stark contrast to the "loot pinata" style of RPG. To be fair, some of those are done incredibly
well, and weâve clicked and right-triggered to the best of them, but they rely on a huge
amount of procedural loot generation and the game becomes all about finding the next larger
sword.â The tone and visuals are noticeably influenced
by Lovecraft and at first glance it might seem like the Affliction system is too, but
the creators mentioned they actually didnât want to use the insanity concept thatâs
very common in that genre. Instead they focused on the role of the human
experience in history and fiction. During an hour long talk at GCD in 2016, Tyler
gave the example of Band of Brothers as a direct inspiration for afflictions. He talked about Neal McDonoughâs character,
Buck Compton, and describes him as a tall, tough, energetic person that holds the squad
together. At least until the 7th episode, when a couple
of his friends die during a battle. âAnd thereâs this great scene where he
comes up, and he has a thousand-yard stare, shellshocked, and he takes off his helmet,
and thatâs it: his war is over. I think that was really a moment that we wanted
to capture.â Since the affliction system is so important
to the overall experience, the studio needed to come up with ways to communicate the hardships
the heroes were going through during battle and exploration. Aside from using appropriate graphics and
sound effects to signal heroes were gaining stress, the developers also implemented something
called âbarksâ. Barks are essentially lines of dialogue from
heroes that can appear while playing the game. Itâs meant to communicate the current state
of the heroes more actively, as well as humanize them. Chris wanted the art style to feel old and
worn and to accomplish this he referenced a lot of illuminated manuscripts, medieval
woodcuts, and other period work. To give the game a fresh and modern look,
Chris also took inspiration from his favorite comic book artists like Mike Mignola, Chris
Bachalo, Guy Davis & Viktor Kalvachev. Furthermore, he wanted to have a bit of levity
in an otherwise grim game, so he decided to add a cute flavor to the characters. This in turn also gave the designs a more
iconic look. Chris sometimes streamed his creation process
in Photoshop and during his streams he talked about some of the artistic decisions and what
Red Hook Studios was doing behind the scenes. The animations were done by Brooks Gordon
and he used a versatile 2d animation package called âSpineâ by Esoteric Software. When it came to programming the game, the
studio decided to not rely on existing engines and instead used a home-rolled lightweight
cross-platform C++ engine made by their first programmer, Kelvin McDowell. Since the game was not very technically demanding
and Unity hadnât released their 2D toolkit yet, they felt they could get by with a more
lightweight engine. Red Hook took a thematic approach for designing
the heroes. The first thing they did was make a list of
all the classes they wanted to incorporate and that would match the gloomy victorian
setting. After having about 40 characters on paper,
they would try and visualize what each one would do in combat. More often than not, this would help them
to come up with respective roles and abilities. A good example of this is the Leper hero,
whose nerves are destroyed and therefore doesnât feel pain, giving him good defense stats. However, the disease also causes blindness
which makes the Leper inaccurate during battle. This results in the Leper being more adequate
when placed in front of the row where he can be used as a tank fighter. Red Hook used the same design approach for
the monsters, taking the positioning concept and potential lore reasons into account. Tyler and Chris had created a very grim and
dark atmosphere for Darkest Dungeon and to further add to this they hired voiceover talent
Wayne June as the gameâs narrator. Chris first discovered Juneâs work while
painting late at night. When he heard Juneâs readings of H.P. Lovecraft, Chris was immediately hooked. This happened years prior to starting development,
before there was even the idea for Darkest Dungeon, but Chris said it planted a seed
in his mind that one day he had to find a way to work with Wayne June. When the studio was working on the first trailer,
they needed some narration to help set the tone. Their original idea was to hire someone that
sounded like Wayne June, until they realized June reads things for a living so they decided
to give it a shot and ask him. When they heard Juneâs work for the trailer,
Chris and Tyler knew they just had to find a way to implement him in the full game. They said it was one of the best decisions
theyâve made. On January 30th 2015 Darkest Dungeon was released
on Steamâs Early Access program and by now Red Hook Studios had grown to include six
people. In addition, three more people contributed
to the game with sound, music and narration. At first, the Early Access version was being
very well received by players, with many saying that it felt like an already finished game. Big streamers and YouTubers were broadcasting
their enjoyment of the dungeon crawler to the world, which was not only good for exposure,
but it also provided necessary feedback for the developers. They were essentially playtesting the game
for Red Hook Studios which allowed the developers to release frequent updates to balance and
improve the game, while also adding fresh new content. Tyler said that the toughest part about Early
Access is that everyone can see your highs and lows but he and the team firmly believe
that this transparent approach ultimately made for a better video game. Around July of 2015, the Early Access version
went through some interesting changes that made the game even more difficult and unfair
than it already was. The two major changes were the addition of
corpses and heart attacks. The first turns a defeated enemy into a corpse,
taking up an extra enemy space on the battlefield. The second can instantly kill heroes when
they reach the maximum amount of stress, depending on their current state. These inclusions caused some people to seriously
criticize the game for being needlessly difficult. Chris and Tyler defended their decision to
include corpses and heart attacks. They both felt that corpses added more strategy
to the positioning system and that heart attacks were an added incentive to manage the stress
levels of the playerâs heroes. However, for some people their reasoning didnât
matter and instead made people even more upset. In an interview with Kotaku, Tyler Sigman
further explained the whole situation: âI remember asking, âis this the right feature
for the game?â And then, even if it is, should we walk it
back because there are enough people upset? Even if we believe in this feature in our
hearts? We would just sit on Google Hangouts, me and
Tyler, and try to argue every possible perspective. Weâd switch camps on each other. We did a lot of soul searching. The prevailing dread was just that weâd
had such universal accolades that it was a bit of a system shock for us. We were worried that all of that was suddenly
gonna go away because of one change. But arenât we allowed to make changes in
Early Access?â Things only got worse from here on out and
in August 2015 the official Darkest Dungeon forums were filled with hateful messages targeted
at the studio. Not only that, a divide among players had
sprung up since some people were defending the gameplay changes, creating even more outrage
on the forums. Although Red Hook studios really believed
in these new features and that they were important to the Darkest Dungeon experience as a whole,
they eventually gave people the option to disable corpses and heart attacks. The creators said theyâve always been very
reluctant to add difficulty related options since focusing on their intended version of
the game had always been the number one priority. However, they also mentioned they would be
fools to not consider the established community that might want to play the game in a different
way. By default the features were left enabled
though since Red Hook feels they are important to the context of the broader experience. Unfortunately, even after giving players the
choice to turn corpses and heart attacks on or off, a vocal minority were still bashing
the developers. This led to the studio introducing a strict
code of conduct on their forums in October 2015. The studio realized too late they should have
hired a community manager the moment Darkest Dungeon started to sell in high numbers. âI think it was naive of us to think we
could drop into forums and be judged only by our content, our work ethic, or whatever
it might be. There was such a high, good general feeling
around the game at first, it was like, âmaybe we donât need tons of help.â That was definitely a mistake.â The fully developed version of Darkest Dungeon
was scheduled to release on PC in October 2015 but due to a personal tragedy, development
had to slow down, postponing the release date to January 19th 2016. Upon release, the game received very positive
reviews and scored an 84 on Metacritic. Yet, a group of people that were still dissatisfied
with the difficulty changes, decided to keep boycotting the game by spreading hateful messages
on forums, comment sections of reviews and so on. Some complained about Red Hook Studios messing
up an almost perfect game, while others accused the studio of censorship on the official Darkest
Dungeon forums. Some of them even started to spam Jim Sterling,
a well known gamer critic, in the hopes that he would support the boycott and write a negative
review. This backfired however and Sterling ended
up praising the final release of Darkest Dungeon. He even tweeted about it, saying itâs not
his problem that some people dislike the game. Despite this attempted boycott, the game continued
to receive great scores from critics and after a week Darkest Dungeon had already sold over
650,000 copies, including those from Kickstarter Backers and Early Access purchases. In May 2016, Red Hook Studios released their
first major update called âEverything Burnsâ. This update added âTown Eventsâ, which
added random events whenever the player returns from a dungeon. The PlayStation 4 and Vita version were released
later that year on September 27th 2016. In April of 2017, support for Steam Workshop
was added and on June 19th 2017, the gameâs first DLC was released called âThe Crimson
Courtâ. It added a new hero class, a new dungeon type,
new enemies, new bosses and more. On August 24th 2017, a version for the iPad
was released and allowed players to transfer their save files from PC. A second smaller DLC pack called âThe Shieldbreakerâ
was released on October 26th 2017 and included a new hero, new items and new monsters. By December 2017 all versions combined had
sold over two million copies. The Nintendo Switch version was released on
January 18th 2018 and shortly after the Xbox One version released on February 28th 2018. A retail version of the game, subtitled as
the Ancestral Edition, was also released in 2018 for both Nintendo Switch and PlayStation
4 and included all previously released DLC. On June 19th 2018 another DLC pack was released
called âThe Color of Madnessâ and included a new region, an Endless Quest, new items,
new enemies and bosses, an expanded soundtrack, new district buildings, new curios and quirks. For a while many assumed The Color of Madness
was the final DLC but Red Hook posted an image on April 1st 2020 which gave people a sneak
peak at their upcoming DLC. The image looked very slapped together indicating
that it might simply be an April Foolâs Joke. Surprisingly the studio released another image
the next day confirming that the new DLC was real and is scheduled for release in May 2020. The Butcherâs Circus will add PVP to the
game, allowing players to engage in four-on-four combat without sacrificing any of their campaign
heroes. Red Hook Studios is far from done with the
world they created for Darkest Dungeon since they announced a direct sequel in February
2019. The developers have said the sequel will feature
a significant tuned-up version of the existing combat system in terms of mechanics and presentation. The metagame structure however, will be something
completely different compared to the original Darkest Dungeon. âDarkest Dungeon 2 is a game about enduring
a gruelling journey, not cleaning up your backyard.â The studio is planning on releasing Darkest
Dungeon 2 on Early Access first, just like the original. Even though they received some harsh criticism
during Early Access, the developers still feel that such a transparent development approach
is really important to help finish a game. It gets the game in the hands of fans faster
which is great for both getting essential feedback and potentially making changes in
the production plan based on reception. Tyler and Chris love the cast of dysfunctional
characters theyâve created and mentioned they have a lot more story they want to tell. Above all, Red Hook is committed to turn the
sequel into its own experience that will have its own creative and thematic identity.
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