We’ve seen a lot of people do dark runs and things like that. We only really want to shut the doors that we feel are exploitative, that undermine our intended experience coming out of the game. We want to give people a sandbox to play in. As we refine the balance, especially, new tactics will open up. GamesBeat: As you make tweaks during Early Access, do you ever feel like you’re kind of pulling the ball away from Charlie Brown?īourassa: I think we’re actually adding more balls. So yeah, there’s definitely a strong tabletop current in the game.

We had the Mordheim book kicking around for a while. But it’s not?īourassa: We took a lot of inspiration from board games and some pen-and-paper stuff. GamesBeat: This felt so pen and paper-y to me that I thought it was actually based on a campaign you might have run. Can I hit the potion button fast enough? Darkest Dungeon is more about the slog and the long peril and how far you can push before it’s too late.

If you can just quaff healing potions every time your globe gets almost empty, the only threat you’re feeling is a reactionary, dexterity threat. It has a mortality and a peril and a cost. The other thing is, some of those powerful magics and instant heals, it kind of goes against what we’re trying to make you feel, which is that adventuring has a cost. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it just that there are so many RPGs out there doing that. A lot of those things - even traditional high fantasy didn’t really guide - I suppose it guided us a bit in the sense that we knew from the beginning we didn’t want to do fireball spells and healing potions. Definitely played some Ravenloft in the past, in my pen and paper days, but it never came to mind in our discussion. Really, the central idea was to try to bring Lovecraft into the Middle Ages, to get him out of the 1920s. I never really learned how to play D&D properly, but I read it cover to cover several times.

Did you guys play that at all?īourassa: I had a Ravenloft module. I think about Ravenloft, from Dungeons & Dragons. GamesBeat: Of course everyone keeps saying Lovecraft when they talk about this game.

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