Vancouver, B.C.-based indie game developer Red Hook Studios announced on Tuesday that it has begun work on Darkest Dungeon 2, a sequel to the hit 2016 dungeon crawler. The announcement comes on the third anniversary of the original DD‘s exit from Steam Early Access.
Most of what’s known right now about DD2 comes from a short PC Gamer interview with two of Red Hook’s developers. The new game is being made by a significantly larger team, up to 14 from the five core creators who worked on the original DD, and will feature an updated version of the original’s gameplay.
Are you courageous enough tot carry the Flame? We're working on a sequel to Darkest Dungeon! https://t.co/Hpgo36NFVb
— Darkest Dungeon (@DarkestDungeon) February 19, 2019
Darkest Dungeon was initially funded via Kickstarter in 2014, and entered Steam’s Early Access program in 2015. The player takes the role of an adventurer who discovers that she has inherited an estate from a dead relative. Upon arrival, she finds that the extensive tunnels below the manor building contain portals that have released an untold number of evil creatures into the world, and she must recruit a party to clean the place out.
Unlike a lot of games with a similar premise, Darkest Dungeon draws heavily upon themes and mechanics from horror, particularly H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The player has to watch out for character stress levels and mental health, in addition to terrible monsters. You don’t just have to keep your adventurers alive, but also just sane and human enough to function, and you’re almost guaranteed to lose a few of them to injury, trauma, or worse.
Darkest Dungeon quickly became a bestseller on Steam, and “graduated” from Early Access 11 months later, with subsequent ports to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. It received two DLC expansions, The Crimson Court and The Colour of Madness, in 2017 and 2018.
