Darkest Stardew
Two very different video games led to very similar degrees of obsession.
Don’t you love that feeling? A new game. Scanning the title screen for neat little ideas you haven’t seen before. Taking in the flashy or maybe shy art design. Going through the options, menus and even the control setups religiously — only to possibly find a tiny hint or advantage within the gameplay to come? Sometimes game dev choices connect wonderfully, you get what was intended, things pay off and you fall into all the right traps.
Sure, sometimes you hit on something that throws you. A short loss of connection? You can shake it off, if not too major… or it messes with your enjoyment irreversibly. For instance, in the first Spelunky I didn’t like the music plus some other design choices and never got into it. Blasphemy for some, I know. At times, very rarely, all of the moments hit just right and you don’t stop falling. You fall into the game, piece by piece. Until… it drains you.
At times, very rarely, all of the moments hit just right and you don’t stop falling.
That last bit sounds rather unpleasant, I know. But it is important to keep in mind: The harder the obstacles are in a game, the more satisfying and joyful the sense of achievement after overcoming them. It’s as simple as that. No pain no (fun) gain. So there’re these two video games, which left a strong impression on me in that regard. Stardew Valley and Darkest Dungeon had an powerfully immersive effect on me, by being so demanding. I simply had to write about them!
One game’s wholesome, colorful, cute, fluffy, lovable, forgiving, good-hearted and like white noise for the restless mind. The other game is mean, taunting, terrifying, hopeless, frustrating, unforgiving and feels like an anger management simulation cranked up to eleven.
Why one would want to play these game for almost 460 hours of his life combined. Yes, I know, there are so many higher numbers of hours spent playing games out there, but my numbers are surely high enough to make a point about a game being worth discussing its fascination to me. And those people with the hours-invested-in-a-game-records aren’t writing this article — they consequently wouldn’t spare time to write an article anyhow, I guess. Weird defensive rant over; obsessive rant starting.
Darkest Dungeon
2016 birthed this tough nut of a roguelite by Red Hook Studios. It took me 172,8 hours to finish it (my playtime until further notice). You throw together a crew of four heroes and charge headlong into arduous adventures against complex sets of enemies and through woods, ruins and dungeons — leading up to the darkest ones of them all at the end.
All of this is presented in an art style that would make Hellboy’s Mike Mignola proud and with narrative themes straight out of the Lovecraft playbook for cosmic dread and terminal insanity. I played through Darkest Dungeon in autumn 2020, after a month or two of travail.
There is no fancy cinematic 3D design and cinematics to blow your CG-photorealism-hungry mind. All’s done with heavily inked 2D-art and low key animation, quite effective still. Other than this animatic comic book feel you gotta love the narrator. He’s a rich occultist hedonist gone mad — and suicidal — commenting on your progress, every critical attack and turn of events. My favorite quotes by the dark voice are triggered, when you successfully kill an opponent by poisoning them: “The slow death… unforeseen, unforgiving” and “Great is the weapon that cuts on its own!” Such glamorous writing.
All of the heroes are different, their load-outs and skill sets. And they are expandable, of which a disclaimer informs you right at the start of the game. You will always receive more random batches of heroes in a stage coach at your base. So go ahead, give your Grave Robber femme fatal a funny name, max out the Antiquarian “resolve” (XP) or buy your Highwayman the high powered gear — but never get attached. They will die. As soon as you got that through your head, the games fun as hell!
It’s great, improvising with jumbled up hero-combinations, finding out who works best together and how and to be smart about what lucky (buffing) trinkets to give them on their way. You’ll speed along this steep learning curve, it almost makes you woozy. Get strategic! I like to start a run with assigning a Houndmaster, hitting all enemies with a “Hound’s Harry” attack and making them bleed is a treat. I (learned to) love me some Occultist as a bloody healer and because of his ranged tentacle powers, the “Abyssal Artillery”. A successful and critical “Hew” by the melee class Leper, who then double-slices the front opponents, will also brighten your day.
My obsession with his game grew out of mastery. Just like with many video games you develop a routine, you get in the zone. There’s a lot of stuff to keep in mind, many factors to be considered, so in later levels of Darkest Dungeon you start to feel like an almighty numbers magician. You’ll finesse the game passed seemingly impossible tasks using your refined probability assessments and the gut feeling of an experienced warrior legend. It feels amazing, clearing certain level types with ease — the kind you would have died and cried in, back when you started playing this game.
After getting the strategies down and grinding money as well as XP, I felt I could handle this game. Then the selftitled Darkest Dungeons of the game crossed my path. The second to last level of those felt like jumping face first into a brick wall. It’s considered the hardest point in the whole game and is called “Lighting The Way”. It cost me around 20 or 30 hours to finally get through this one— check the Twitch-video beneath to see how that went ultimately.
The extent of my obsession was chilling. During this one level, I lost about two dozen heroes in, I vowed to never play this game ever again — I did so 5 times and always returned to it of course. At the end I even made this oath, quit the game and told people that Darkest Dungeon mocked me for the last time — while clicking and already starting up the game again. I don’t know what I was trying to do there: psychologically tricking me into playing better by creating a finite scenario? I don’t know. All of the time spent, the frustration, the heart-attacks, the dark horrors, and heroes lost at least brought me some steam achievements, some of which only under 0,2 % of players got.
A second part is teased to be coming in 2021. I will have to think long and hard about committing to another obsessive rollercoaster of emotions of that kind again.
This following video contains some spoilers for Darkest Dungeon
Stardew Valley
Let’s now walk into the light, with birds chirping and soft synths twanging. This game was also published in 2016, the masterminds of ConcernedApe and Chucklefish came up with a pixelated farming simulator fuelled by pure joyousness (inspired by Harvest Moon and such). I put 254,57 hours into this one, my second life. I have played it for more than three months in 2019’s winter.
Your granddad bequeaths you a rundown farm and you spend days, seasons and even (in-game) years to grow millions worth of crops on its planes made of squares. Not to forget, you will explore and fight your way through seriously deep mines, spend time cooking, socialising with townsfolk and uncovering insane amounts of quirky secrets. The acquisition of complex sets of tools and items with Minecraft-ian levels of combinational potential will take over your life.
First it’s just curiosity and trying out some stuff. What am I even supposed to do in this game? I made a cool lady character with skull t-shirt, named her Joe and she started to plant some seeds. This then planted some other kind of seeds in my head. The kind that grows into time- and all-consuming engagement of epic proportions.
As mentioned the gameplay and look of Stardew Valley are really wholesome. And you might consider starting a meditation course after listening to the mellow soundtrack for even just a bit. The gratification of literally hauling in the fruits of your labor is grande. Also the characters, many storylines and the other areas of the game, which open up more and more, just keep sucking you right in.
Soon you optimise every step: What can you do in a day and what chores and adventure can you fit in it? Best, you set yourself an achievable near-goal. On my “Mud Ranch” that could mean: “Today I start by feeding the chicken and tiny dinosaurs after collecting their eggs. Then I milk my cow ‘Karli’, head on to Clint the blacksmith and let him break open some geodes I found. Hey, I could fish for rare squid at the ocean and after a short seed-shopping break I gamble Black Jack in the desert, I used a teleportation pillar to get to.” You then did about 0,1% you can do in this game.
It felt like a relaxing time off toiling in Stardew Valley — time off from my own life and stress. Ironically working on a fake pixel farm turns out to be so much more satisfying than the real day job. I began to obsess about certain hard-to-find items and fishing all the fishable fish. Of course I had to start a family too, so I wooed and married blue haired Emily. We, same sex couple, adopted kids and “reproduction” on my fields also kicked into next gear.
I found out about Ancient Seeds and Starfruit Seeds. They are hard to find, take ages to sprout and to grow. When they do, you need to facilitate new seeds out of them as well. Then those special fruits can be turned into juices and out of those you make wine within casks in your cellar. The special wine then can be sold for an extremely high price. This little trade made me rich, rich I tell you.
There was almost no area, challenge or special collection in Stardew Valley I wouldn’t want to complete in its entirety. I had to cook all the cookable meals which meant, I had to acquire every recipe and its ingredients first — be it mayonnaise, seasonal windfalls or extra rare fish eggs. Sadly my real life doesn’t have such a system of check boxes.
Here’s a a video with a best-of of many beautiful moments and my glorious list of game achievements at the end.
This video might contain spoilers for Stardew Valley
Great games think alike
A friend and fellow author, Andreas Capek, drew my attention to the fact that I had been so similarly obsessed with those two dissimilar games. But the differences are only skin deep.
On the spectrum of game genres Darkest Dungeon and Stardew Valley aren’t really adjacent to one another. But there’s stuff that unites them. For instance they are both the same age, almost 5 years old. I enjoy being late to the party, if the games are that high-quality.
Dark caverns full of meanies are one of the main attractions in both games. Upgrading your gear and equip torches as well as special items to get through the dangerous darkness more easily. That statement is also doubly applicable.
Both video games have heavy management aspects, be it development of a cursed village, its abbey, tavern and sanatorium — or the expansion of a intricate homestead full of appliances and never-ending undertakings.
Two games that require you to perfect strategies — from day-planning your farm life to muddling through messy battle against horrific monstrosities. Soon those challenges will make you feel like a damn master of game mechanics — while still always leaving you mountains to climb. Darkest Dungeon and Stardew Valley will teach you: Organise right and bring the right stuff for the job.
It’s been fun analysing, zeroing in on and spelling out what I like about (these) video games. Writing such an odd comparison helped me quite a lot to understand fundamental truths about my enjoyment of video games.
Epilog:
The next obsessive masterpiece already has its hooks in me. I am talking of course about Hades … oh man.
Don’t even try to reach me, I’m off going through unforgiving dungeons again.
(all screenshots, edited or unchanged, were made by the author “fair use” for purposes of criticism and comment.)
