One of the greatest, grizzliest roguelikes is on Game Pass, and you need to play it now

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Often, video games overlook a very simple – and very real – part of the heroic experience. If you’re some decorated soldier that’s ventured out into the wilds on many conquests and expeditions, you’re not always going to come home happy, smiling, with a clean conscience and untroubled mind. There’s an accumulation of guilt, of shame, of trauma. This is something Darkest Dungeon knows, and more than just acknowledging it, the developers at Red Hook Studios make it the central conceit of the game.

At its core, Darkest Dungeon is a role-playing game in which you take control of a roster of heroes who are tasked with cleansing evil from the graveyards and castles and swamps of their homeland. You operate out of a central Hamlet – a hub that you can upgrade and flesh out as your band of grizzled heroes liberate more land. So far, so standard right? Not so much.

Perhaps the most unique part of Darkest Dungeon comes from the Affliction system; a novel way of representing stress, trauma, psychological harm. If you send your band of doomed heroes into the depths of some unknown dungeon without food or light, or if they witness the death or injury of a fellow party member in battle, or suffer the blights of unholy enemies, they will take mental damage – and (just like in real life) the results of stress and anxiety can be costly.

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