Preview: Darklight Dungeon Eternity

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 1, 2011

Back in April Jesse Zoeller sent me an alpha link to his upcoming old-school style role-playing game, Darklight Dungeon Eternity. While it’s still an early build missing a lot of features (not to mention levels), I thought I’d share a little bit of my experiences about this upcoming title. Just bear in mind that this is based on an alpha still many months from completion, and so a lot can change between this version and the final release.

If you’ve played the first game, Darklight Dungeon, you will know what to expect. Darklight Dungeon: Eternity is a first-person perspective RPG that takes place inside a single, really big dungeon. Hearkening back to the old dungeon crawlers of the 80s and early 90s, the player is restricted to the four cardinal directions of movement. However, the dungeon is rendered with full-fledged 3D technology, including shader effects to make the water surfaces look nice, so it’s not quite like revisiting the past. As in the previous game, the detailing on the wall and floor geometry is a little on the plain and repetitive side. But there are a lot more objects in the dungeons to break up the monotony, so every room is generally unique in some way, making it easier to figure out where you are without necessarily checking out the in-game map.

The game is turn based, but with a time limit on turns. So if you just hang out in a patrolled corridor you will be attacked sooner or later. This doesn’t seem to apply in combat, fortunately, where you can take as long as you want.

Not all encounters are hostile. Some creatures begin the encounter willing to ignore you, allowing you to exit the encounter safely. At other times, escape comes with risk of failure (and repeat attacks by the enemy group). Early in the game, encounters are mostly with individual creatures, but later they more often appear in groups. Combat is still fairly straightforward, but the new game adds elements like blocking with your shield, and more strategic use of spells by both the player and the enemies.

Your character is classless – or as the Munchkin card game would say it, you have no class. Your character can both fight and use magic. Both are critical, as there are places in the dungeon where magic does not work, and places where only magic can harm your enemies. The game is both skill-based and level-based.  As you gain experience, you will gradually gain power by leveling, and gain points to increase your primary attributes.

Skills are increased by visiting the trainer in the village just outside the dungeon. This takes gold – and lots of it, as your skill levels increase.  So far as I can tell, your skills aren’t limited by your level (but that may be simply that I can’t earn money fast enough to hit the caps). Most skills simply give you incremental bonuses to your effectiveness. Some, like “cartography,” are more “dungeon aids” than anything else — if you don’t feel like making maps by hand.  (I’m out of the habit, so it’s one of the first skills I took). The skills all have several levels of improvement.  Some of the most critical and useful skills – like water breathing, or regeneration – are a bit more on the pricey side, but for good reason.

Of course, equipment is also key to survival in the dungeon. The merchant in the village offers some items for sale, but what he has is generally more baseline equipment compared to what can be found in the dungeon. I don’t know if any equipment is level-restricted (UPDATE: Yes, yes it is… in fact, I had some in my inventory I’d not noticed), but some of it is skill-restricted. One more reason to blow your gold on skill increases!  You can also purchase spells from the wizard in the village, which will likewise be pretty critical (especially healing). The wizard will also trade in rare magical artifacts that can do things like permanently increase attributes, but according to the developer these will require trade-in of rare magical essences found in the dungeon.

Enemies appear as shadows on-screen – you won’t know exactly what you are about to encounter until you collide with them (or vice versa). Combat is handled via a menu, and their visuals are static 2D images. It’s low budget and low tech, but it does the job. Monsters (and treasures) will respawn over time – at least most of them will.  A lot of the early dungeon delving is very reminiscent of old-school RPGs: You make repeated forays into the first level or so of the dungeon, fighting the same encounters, and retreating quickly back to the safety of the village after only a few encounters. Later, once you’ve obtained skills in magic and hit point regeneration, you will be better set for more extended journeys.

And by “extended” I’m not kidding around. This dungeon is fifty levels deep. Yes. Fifty. Five-Zero. The levels aren’t dinky modern CRPG levels either, but extensive Might & Magic era levels with dozens and dozens of rooms each, too. Considering the number of hours I’ve spent in just the first couple of levels, this is going to be a long game. (Jesse wasn’t kidding when he included “Eternity” in the title, I guess…)  From his reports, there will be plenty of quests, riddles, and puzzles going on through each level, and there is already quite a bit to hold my interest. It’s not just monsters and treasures. Spiked corridors, chasms, pools, special areas (filled with water, gas, magical effects, etc), traps, and so forth abound… even in the first level.

One interesting feature is that the village is constantly offering a bounty. You need to accept the quest first, but then once you’ve slain a monster of the given type, you can return and claim a little extra gold and experience for your kill. It’s very helpful in the early game, but later in the game it’s just more of a small bonus when you manage to get back to civilization.

As far as NPC interaction is concerned – so far I’ve really not encountered anything beyond the village menu and a choice of whether or not to fight docile monsters. While this could change in the final version, I’d not anticipate Darklight Dungeon Eternity being a game long on deep story, plot development, and interesting characters. It’s about hacking and slashing and puzzle-solving and questing.  It’s about managing risk and resources and knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. It’s a game where “character development” is about beefing up stats, not meaningful conversations.

There’s definitely a place for that. And the place exists on my hard drive.  Sometimes that’s exactly the kind of RPG I feel like playing. It’s got an addictive quality to keep progressing, gaining power to explore deeper and more dangerous territory – the sort of thing that attracts me to the genre in the first place. Hopefully the final version will take what’s working with the alpha and build on it. I’m looking forward to seeing how this ends up.

Darklight Dungeon: Eternity is planned for a November release (11/11/11, along with about 500 other games). For more information, you can go visit the Darklight Dungeon website.

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