Developer: Shiro Games
Publisher: Shiro Games
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Darksburg – Review
At first glance, Darksburg looks a lot like games such as Diablo and Path of Exile, so we were excited to start with this game. Darksburg distinguishes itself from other games by adding a survival aspect to this roguelite experience. The five available heroes offer enough variation to keep the game interesting and time seems to fly at an unbelievable tempo while playing this game. Escaping Darksburg is the main goal, and this proves to be quite a challenge on your own. Luckily Darksburg is built around co-op gameplay so you can play with friends or others online for an even better gaming experience. Too bad there’s hardly any actual content to explore.
Story
Darksburg doesn’t really have story content and also doesn’t offer a story mode, but we can tell you something about its background. Darksburg is a little town that has been overrun by massive hordes of the undead. You, as one of the survivors, need to escape, together with your team members. As you progress through the levels, huge hordes of the undead will sometimes start rushing towards you at points where you need to hold your ground for a while, to complete a task before you can continue. Teamwork in these situations is necessary, as you need to protect certain areas while also gathering materials that are required to finish the task there. Sadly, after escaping Darksburg, the game ends, and the only thing you can do is trying to escape from Darksburg again.
Graphics
Darksburg looks quite good with an environment that’s very detailed in each district. The atmosphere of Darksburg that is overrun with the undead is worked out great. Each playable character looks very good in both the menus and in-game. Each attack looks awesome has proper special effects, making the game even more atmospheric in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
Sound
Each character is completely voiced, but they barely speak throughout the game, probably because the game is somewhat devoid of any story content, making actual conversations useless. It’s still a nice touch to have some ‘voiced’ characters, but it somewhat falls flat if there’s nothing for them to hold on to in the story department, or even in terms of actual character background(s). The background music used in Darksburg fits the dark theme of the game perfectly and it changes at some moments when the tension rises, which is a nice touch.
Gameplay
Darksburg is a co-op roguelite set in the dark town of Darksburg that is overrun by hordes of undead creatures. In the town of Darksburg, there are five remaining survivors that won’t give up in their quest to escape this town. Each survivor has its own gameplay style and a unique skill set to make each run with a different character a new experience. Three of the survivors have melee-oriented attacks, while two others have projectile-based skills and attacks, so there’s enough choice for everyone.
You can play Darksburg in both online and offline play. While playing offline, you can choose up to three AI-controlled companions to bring with you. In online play, other players from around the world will join you to escape the town of Darksburg. As you progress in your escape, you will gain experience and level up. When you level up, you can choose between three randomly-picked perks that will boost one of your skills. After leveling up a few times, some wise choices in perk-picking can lead to an enormous increase in damage output and efficiency.
While the town of Darksburg offers a procedurally generated adventure, with a new layout and changes to the loot you’ll find, after a few runs through the town of Darksburg, you basically saw the game has to offer. Sadly, that’s the entire game’s shtick, escaping from Darksburg. After crossing four or five maps across the town of Darksburg, you’ll always end up fighting the last boss to successfully escape Darksburg. The game then just stops with a victory screen, and the only thing you can do next is starting a new run. The game does offer you a new difficulty after clearing a run, but it won’t really offer you more content than you just saw. You can level up to a maximum level of nine, resulting in a maximum of eight choices for new perks.
Darksburg does have a kind of reward system for those who have done a big amount of runs through Darksburg, with the Cabinet of Curiosities. By investing Dreadium Ingots found in chests and loot from bosses, you can unlock curios, which grant permanent passive boosts. You can choose up to four common Curios, three fancy Curios and two extravagant Curios, where common Curios grant the smallest effects with a relatively low purchase cost and Extravagant Curios grant the best effects, but have a higher purchase cost. Sadly, the amount of Dreadium Ingots gathered with a full run is barely enough to purchase a common Curio, so to purchase an extravagant Curio, you would need to complete ten to twelve runs to only unlock the first slot for an extravagant Curio while you also need to purchase that as well. Each Curio you unlock will be a surprise as the content of each Curio is hidden until you unlock it, so after spending a lot of time to collect enough ingots, you could be really disappointed if the Curio you unlocked has a useless effect.
Conclusion
While the idea of Darksburg is amazing and the game is worked out great in both graphics and gameplay, the game does have the shortcoming that the only thing you can do is escape Darksburg over and over again. We would rather see more towns to explore for a bigger amount of content in the game. Each run will approximately take around an hour and after this, you can only start a new run where you will encounter the same enemies, perform the same objectives and defeat the same boss. This game is perfect for those who don’t mind playing the same level over and over again, but for those who want to explore and find new areas, this game is a big disappointment. We see it as a missed chance for an amazing game that just lacks more content to explore.
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