It’s a big day for Darkest Dungeon 2 (opens in new tab), the sequel to Red Hook Games’ bleakly stylish and brutally difficult roguelike. After two years spent grinding through the dank warrens of early access development, the game hits version 1.0 later today. Moreover, this is timed to coincide with its official launch on Steam, having undertaken its early access journey exclusively on the Epic Store.
“We are thrilled to be back on Steam, and look forward to hearing your thoughts,” Red Hook’s development team recently wrote in a Steam news post (opens in new tab). “For those of you who were with us for Darkest Dungeons I’s journey, you know we always read the forums and value your input.”
The post outlines what players can expect from version 1.0, including “twelve playable characters” and “a complete narrative featuring five acts”. Some of this is new to the v 1.0 release, specifically the final two acts and the twelfth character – The Flagellant. As the name implies, the Flagellant draws strength from his own suffering, able to take on the negative status effects from other party members, and gaining buffs as he nears death.
Red Hook also states it has listened to feedback from the Steam demo released back in February, paying particular mind to the newly introduced 3D sections of the game. “We made a number of improvements to our driving system, the Valley and first time user experience – along with a huge swath of new content and features.
One feature that won’t be available in the 1.0 release is mod support. While the devs state they are “very passionate” about modding and have “a lot of great ideas” about how to implement mods, it’s something they will “devote time” to after the 1.0 launch.
You can see the game in action in the launch trailer above. I personally found the original Darkest Dungeon a shade too grim, but as explained in Ian Birnbaum’s review (opens in new tab), there’s no question it’s a quality product, and I’d be surprised if the sequel is any less well made.
