Fear And Gloaming: Darkest Dungeon

Dungeons are horrible places and yet adventurers are usually happy to traipse through them in search of a magical doohickey or demon's lair. I don't think I'd feel comfortable spending time with the kind of person who can descend through dark corridors, dripping with the remains of previous visitors, without being at least slightly shaken by the experience. After spending days in the dark, slaughtering horrific creatures, and seeing allies poisoned, impaled on spikes and hacked into pieces, even the most stalwart of barbarians is likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress. Darkest Dungeon seems like an ordinary dungeon crawl but in tracing the mental and emotional scars on its characters, it becomes a far more intriguing proposition. Trailer and details below.

The game should be finished by Autumn 2014 but a crowd-funding campaign may well occur to assist with production. I'm already sold, on the concept at least.

The concept behind Darkest Dungeon is to put the dungeon back in "dungeon crawler." The environment itself is an antagonist - a scary, haunted place where your chances of survival are slim, hordes of terrifying monsters notwithstanding.

Each and every adventurer you recruit will develop a unique combination of predispositions, proclivities, flaws and strengths - factors that must be carefully considered when forming a party and leading it through horrific environs. Furthermore, how you perfom in the dungeon will have lasting and impactful consequences on their continued development. You are put smack-dab in the role of a squad leader or sports team manager, doing your best to keep the human factors from fracturing your team or destroying their effectiveness.

On top of the Affliction system, which tracks each hero's stress levels and monitors their psychological status and relationships with one another, the game features perma-death and turn-based tactical combat. Tasty.

In short, we want to create the kind of team interaction and tension that arises in the most desperate situations. We want Hudson’s panic from 'Aliens', MacReady’s booze-battling from 'The Thing', James’s detached sadism from 'The Hurt Locker'. We want you to manage a party of human heroes faced with almost insurmountable odds. If you can lead them to victory, you’ll have earned it.

Via Indie Statik.