On August 24, the App Store is going Dark

Front Page Discussion
#1

Originally published at: http://statelyplay.com/2017/08/09/on-august-24-the-app-store-is-going-dark/

iPad, PC/Mac/Linux •


It’s official. Darkest Dungeon is officially coming to our iPads, and it’s happening in only a couple weeks. We’ve been asking about Darkest Dungeon on our iPads before the PC/Mac version was out of Early Access, but were always given answers that neither confirmed or denied a mobile port. Makes sense, as developer Red Hook is up to their eyeballs with supporting and expanding the PC/Mac version. Turns out Red Hook had an accomplice in getting the iPad version up and running, Blitworks, which I’d never heard of before, but have instantly become one of my favorite devs. If you can’t tell, I kind of like Darkest Dungeon.

If you’re not familiar with Darkest Dungeon, here’s the pitch. It’s basically XCOM, but in a fantasy setting with all the warmth of a Rob Zombie movie. You are the descendant of a disgraced family who dabbled in the dark arts and shit went bad. Real bad. The town and everything in it is in ruins, swarmed over by the undead, demons, and worse. You’re here to reclaim your birthright, and to do that you need to clean out the vermin and figure out what happened in the first place. Of course, you’re too important to send into the tunnels yourself, and this is where the XCOM-like part of the game lies. You recruit adventurers and send them in to do your dirty work. Unlike XCOM, Darkest Dungeon is 2D with your party moving left and right through the dungeon. Combat is still turn based, and figuring out which powers to use and when before your enemies dispatch you is where the fun lies.

Along the way you’ll unlock and upgrade buildings of the ruined hamlet, improve your adventurers, and throw your device across the room when they die. There are no saves in Darkest Dungeon, when a character dies they’re gone.

  • Manage a team of heroes through the physical and mental stresses of adventuring. Try to stop paranoia, greed, anger, hopelessness, and more from crippling the party.
  • Affliction System: Make the most of character flaws and strategically construct your party to overcome hardship.
  • Innovative turn-based combat with a nostalgic feel
  • Striking hand-drawn 2d gothic art style
  • Extensive narration system to celebrate your successes...and failures
  • Original score by Stuart Chatwood, composer for eight "Prince of Persia" games and founding member of multi-platinum Canadian rock band "The Tea Party."
  • Meaningful consequences and permadeath deliver heightened tension and provide for truly heroic moments.
  • A Lovecraftian-inspired story of greed and redemption.
The iPad version is coming on August 24th, and will include the full PC/Mac version of the game which is easily 80+ hours of delving. Red Hook has also mentioned that the Crimson Court expansion, which launched for PC/Mac earlier this year, will be coming to the iPad version a bit later in 2017. The game will be a premium title, with no freemium shenanigans, but the App Store price has yet to be determined. They've also created a cool feature where you can export saves from the PC/Mac version via Dropbox and upload them into the tablet version, continuing your game on either platform.

I’m hoping to have a review of the iPad version ready to go when it launches on the 24th, so we’ll let you know if they did the port right. Of course, this is assuming it works on my old iPad Air. Here’s hoping!

https://youtu.be/h-mXN3akTPU
#2

Please say there isn’t a hunger mechanism involved in this?

#3

Hrkhrk…I totally got the headline wrong…

I thought that would be the day 32bit would “go to hell” :wink:

#4

Yeah - I assumed the worst too. Time to bring forward the archiving ready for the End.

As it is, it’s just damage to the wallet. Could be worse…

#5

Time to stick my head over the parapet with a first post, hi people! I’ve made it over here, been lurking for a while and thought it was about time I posted.

Really pleased to see this coming to iPad, I think it is a great title for it (one of many that I own on Steam but haven’t played yet). I’m just really hoping that it reaches back to iPad 4 with its compatibility. I’m braced for it not being compatible though.

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#6

Hunger is minor, it’s light management that is really important and it functions more like you would think of a traditional hunger management system.

There are actually a lot of management systems around healing over time out of the dungeon so you need a stable of adventurers, and upgrading of the town and a lot of little things to manage.

I liked it well enough, I had picked it up in the Steam Sale. But after the first weekend playing it, I have just not felt compelled to go back to it, but I suspect it probably pick it back up every once in a while. After playing this, it actually made me want to play X-Com2 instead, so I picked up the Long War2 mod and ended up playing that for a couple weeks after.

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#7

I can see that. XCOM2 is so dang good.

They feel completely different to me. In XCOM, my soldiers feel like a bunch of badasses, where in Darkest Dungeon I just pretty much expect them to fail. It has that FTL feel for me, where I know I’m going to lose, but the journey is a lot of fun. I’ve been playing DD for a long time, and keep coming back to it even though it usually just pisses me off.

Of the two, XCOM2 is the better game (more options, feels more like a true AAA game), but DD has its charms and I’m glad to be able to finally play it on the toilet.

#8

As @Pitta pointed out in Stately Journalism, this is now out. I had a hard time finding it as an App Store search for some reason, so here’s a link for those so inclined -

1 Like