Take a little bit of Skyrim’s first person, sword and board, magic slinging gameplay, toss in a bit of Escape from Tarkov’s “loot, sell, repeat” gameplay, mix in some competitive team-based PvP, and add just a dash of rougelite. What do you end up with? It could be something like Dark and Darker from Ironmace Games, and if you’re curious about the concept, there’s still time to get into the game’s current alpha playtest ahead of a planned release in late 2023.
Dark and Darker is kind of blowing up on Steam right now and now that we’ve tried it out, it’s easy to see why. Yes, the game still needs some more polish, tuning, balancing, more maps, and other improvements. The game isn’t slated to release until Q4 of 2023 though so there is plenty of time for Ironmace Games to work on that stuff. The core is here though and damn is it fun.
Dive into a dungeon in groups of 3 and fight your way to the treasure through various common RPG baddies, you know, skeletons, rats, and other monsters. Grab that sweet loot with your friends then come on back to the tavern and sell it all to the highest bidder and profit. Easy enough.
The wrinkle? Other teams are in the dungeon with your team competing for the treasure, too… and you’ll need to take them out along the way if you really want all the glory and coin.
Currently each match has 6 teams of 3 in them, but this is a recent patch change and could go up or down in the future.
It’s addictive to say the least and the Steam charts prove it with Dark and Darker hitting over 52K concurrent players in the last 24 hours and the numbers don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
We highly recommend checking Dark and Darker out if it sounds even remotely interesting to you. The current playtest runs until December 23rd so there’s still a day or two for you to head to Steam, click the test button, and hop in.
