Dark and Darker is a PvPvE “extraction looter” video game with various Dungeons & Dragons inspired “classes” to determine the style of play. I find it fun as-is, but with a bit of nitpicking, it could be even better.
To most readers, I’m sure that the first sentence makes little-to-no sense. Let me explain.
PvPvE stands for “Player vs Player vs Environment.” This means that, while playing Dark and Darker, you have the option to fight the monsters that live in the world as well as the other players you encounter. You collect “loot”—armor, weapons, instruments, valuables—by opening treasure chests and rifling through the pockets of the monsters and players you best.
An extraction looter is a style of video game often explained by the simple term “grinding,” where grinding is defined as “playing-over-and-over-again-until-you-get-cool-stuff.” In an extraction looter, you enter an unsafe space—dungeons, caves, and ruins in Dark and Darker—and try to collect as much loot as possible, as fast as possible, so that you can escape the dungeon before the timer runs out. If you are killed by a monster, player, or the end of the timer, you lose all the stuff you collected, as well as the stuff you entered the dungeon with. This creates a “high risk, high reward” dynamic. If you enter the dungeon with a high level of armor and weapons, the dungeon will be harder to escape, but the loot will be better.
At present, there are nine classes in the game. Barbarians, Fighters, Rogues, and Rangers primarily fight with weapons. Wizards, Clerics, Bards, Warlocks, and Druids primarily cast spells. I, myself, play as a Bard. My two other party members play as a Druid and a Fighter.
Now, here are the five features I would love to see implemented within the game:
1. Beginner-friendly tutorials
When I first downloaded Dark and Darker, I was very confused. Don’t get me wrong, I love to play video games, but this one was particularly confusing. When you first create your account, you are meant to choose a class without having experienced any gameplay, and then play the game without any sort of tutorial. Of course, you can later change the class, but it requires deleting your whole character and starting from scratch. In my opinion, it would be beneficial to have a tutorial at the beginning of the game to demonstrate and explain the mechanics of each class so that you can pick a class you feel comfortable using. Additionally, there should be a tutorial for the game itself so that you can jump right into the dungeons without having to teach yourself the game’s controls, complexities, nuances, and quirks while the timer counts down threateningly.
2. Larger moneybags
Currently, gold coins stack up to 10 coins per inventory slot. When you are not in a dungeon, you keep your valuables in your “stash,” which has a set number of inventory slots. In the game, you acquire gold relatively quickly, which means your stash fills up quickly, too. If you want the gold to take up less inventory space, you can use the gold you acquire to buy moneybags. In theory, this is a great idea. However, the moneybags hold 50 coins each, offering only a slight reduction in inventory slot usage. In my opinion, these moneybags should be increased in size to hold at least 100 coins!
3. Backpacks
From what I have seen, there is no such thing as a backpack in Dark and Darker. There is an open slot for something to go on your back, but as of now, you can only use it to wear a cape. Often, players must leave dungeons just as quickly as they enter due to their inventories being full, and it can quickly become boring to sit on the loading screen. So, for higher-level play, a backpack would be a lifesaver. Capes look cool, sure, but as Edna Mode once said: “NO CAPES!”
4. Rotating Items in Inventory Slots
Certain items in the game take up more than one inventory slot. Generally, items will take up a module of inventory slots that correspond to the shape of the item. For example, a falchion—my favorite type of sword—takes up three vertical inventory slots, a golden goblet takes up two vertical inventory slots, and a lantern takes up a 2×2 box of inventory slots. For the non-square items, it would be useful to be able to rotate them to better fit them into your inventory. Let’s say you have 3 horizontal slots open, but no vertical slots open. How can you take a sword into your inventory? Right now, you can’t. But, if it were possible to rotate the sword, you would have just enough space!
5. pity system
A pity system is a feature in many video games that guarantees players a rare item after a certain number of attempts. In games like Genshin Impact, you can “roll” with in game credits to try to unlock a rare character. Each time you roll, the chance of you unlocking the character increases by a small percentage until it is 100% guaranteed. I can see this being implemented in Dark and Darker to help with the quest system. To complete a quest, you are often requested to retrieve X rare item that is dropped by X monster. Unfortunately, there is no pity system in place, so unless your Luck statistic is VERY high, you will never truly have a chance of obtaining the rare item you need, no matter how many times you kill the monster. This feature would be useful to almost every player, but it would especially help characters and parties with low Luck statistics. A pity system would even out the playing field for all classes and ensure all players have a fair chance to complete each quest.