Big part of the darkest dungeon narrative to me is what resources are paid for, and which ones aren't. Upgrades cost heirlooms. Upgrading and maintaining your heroes costs gold. Supplies cost gold. Estates cost gold AND heirlooms. But new characters are completely free. Lives are cheap, easy to pickup, and easy to throw away.

You've uncovered the first part of the ludonarrative of Darkest Dungeon. I think it really comes alive in the second. That's when the grind sets in, and your favourite heroes die again and again, and hopelessness rises. You noticed how the mechanics force you to look at your heroes as collections of quirks and numbers - that's very deliberate. You might start looking at them as people, but as the endless misery grinds you down, they become nothing more than tools to an end. There is only one free resource in the game - people. And so they become mere meat to the grind, just as they are to the caretaker you play as. You feel his despair, the weight placed on his shoulders, and you go to the same extremes that he does, for the same reason - nothing matters but success. It's an unpleasant experience, but it's masterfully crafted ludonarrative.

"real people don't have 'alcoholic' written into their soul" me: *looks at my family tree* me: y e a h

"Weald" is Old English for "forest".

The fate of Simpsons Hentai made me spit my Cheerios on my iPhone. Congratulations.

I think the reason quirks were very obvious and defined statistics as opposed to more fluid, realistic traits you have to learn about, is because the devs wanted everything to be very transparent considering how much RNG the game contains.

Fun fact about Dankest Dungeon (an entire year late). There's another way to play: Soulless corporate CEO. Sack anyone who develops negative traits after a dungeon crawl, and use all your money on your A-Team. Yeah. I mean, it's the most logical and efficient way to play! And all you have to do is discard your heroes if they become a liability.

Jokes on you hbomb, I absolutely have "Alcoholic" written into my soul

"He is too stressed out and the Abbey is full. Send him back to work with a clown!"

Idk, I legit cried when Reynauld died and had to take a break from the game for like 4 days. I don't get attached to ALL of my hired dungeoneers but the ones I do get attached to really stay in my heart. Also I keep thinking about Dismas being the only one left and it makes me sad. I guess it's all about choosing how much emotional energy to invest in your crew.

Priestess "Simpsons Hentai" gets Nymphomania xD

Mono means one, and rail means rail

"You always know the right move to make if you know a little maths" Proceeds to try to stun a maggot (which have inherently high stun resist) with a low damage move that didn't kill it when you could've killed any 3 of them with crush. Nice.

Damn fine RPG - I'm glad you recommended it. Also, I lost my shit when I rewatched this video and realised you renamed your entire party "Kevin."

the first time i played xcom: enemy unknown, i named my very good assault trooper “flash gordon” and gave him hot pink armor. he went on to be the best in the entire unit, and became a chosen psychic. in the end, he tore through enemy lines to flank and kill the final boss, then sacrificed his life to save the planet in the end cutscene. flash, aah-ah. he saved every one of us.

"...they'll go mad, harass their friends and die of a heart attack, like me in fast forward" Spit my coffee. Good show.

i had 2 really good moments playing this game. first was when my crusader with the flagellant quirk became masochistic, so i had to send him to go whip himself until he calmed down enough to only want to whip himself sometimes. second was when a jester i had been training up died, and i immediately got the town event to let me resurrect a hero. the clown lives! one i didnt experience personally but saw online was someone had both their vestal and their bounty hunter develop nymphomania after doing a dungeon. truly, these are the moments we all live for.

You think thats hard? Try naming every character after people in your own personal life and trying to picture it truly as them, makes decisions even harder

If you love Ludonarrative, get into This War of Mine. Probably the best use of ludonarrative to create a genuine anti-war message I've seen not just in video games but anywhere. It's a rare case of a war story that manages to sidestep the problem of war stories glorifying war no matter how hellishly war is presented.

Really great video, pins down a lot of my feelings on these games with emergent, mechanics-driven stories. Even though you evidently name your own Darkest Dungeon characters, it's why I don't do the same, or don't change names, skin / hair colours or faces in XCOM; on one level I don't personally 'get' naming your characters after friends, family or twitter people when there's a high chance that they're going into the meat grinder (and that enhances it for some people!), but rather as those stories develop I get to know those people as the game gave them to me. I've sat down and learned to pronounce Papaloupodos because that was the name of my Greek sniper in Xcom who ended up becoming my number 1. The story didn't get its characters from me, the characters as they were born told me a story in mechanics.

"Simpsons hentai"

The worst thing is when you have a character that can only go to the brothel, but is not allowed into the brothel.

my biggest problem with the ludonarrative in Darkest Dungeon is the realization that you can just completely obsolete everyone's problems if you're just willing to hire some new heroes, send them into a dungeon with no equipment, get as much money as possible, then run away before the last one dies. This leaves you with a free day for your invested heroes to work on expunging their negative traits, the money to do it, the money to do it, and no penalties for your behaviour as you can just fire any survivors and do it again and again, until every hero in your team is perfect, no stress, no negative traits, no gritty realism. The money also ensures you can start every major mission with a full inventory of equipment, just to make it extra safe. it's not particularly fun to do this, and it makes for a much worse experience than playing the game organically as "intended" - but once your heroes have been on a bunch of quests, the cost of losing one in raw grind-time is immense, so you're highly encouraged to abuse the systems like this to prevent the game grinding to a halt while you replace someone who died because you didn't prepare enough - this cost is so high that you're actively encouraged to play it as safely as possible, lest you get set back tens of hours of investment.

So, are we going to get a video about your problems with Bioware games? I'd consider myself a pretty big fan of them, but I'd still be interested in what you have to say, even if you feel the need to strike them down with religious fervor.

I am glad that these game videos are your way to release your stress from having to crawl in the darkest dungeons of youtube and see the eldritch horrors of MRAs.

the trap thing is actually one of my favorite little game design nuggets in the game! it's super awkward and finicky but in being that way it becomes tense and unpredictable like, you know, actually disarming a trap which makes you further emphasize with your characters and i think that's pretty neat!

Everytime I watch one of your videos I love you more, seriously. You just mentioned Papers, please and explained exactly why I love it, even thought I didn't knew I loved it for that reason.

So basically ludonarrative is a fancy way of telling a story through mechanics

I really like how you view games as an introspective and thought-provoking medium as well as entertainment. It makes your videos so interesting and really engaging to watch

The Weald /ˈwiːld/ is an area in South East England situated between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It crosses the counties of Sussex, Hampshire, Kent and Surrey. It has three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the centre; the clay "Low Weald" periphery; and the Greensand Ridge, which stretches around the north and west of the Weald and includes its highest points. The Weald once was covered with forest, and its name, Old English in origin, signifies woodland. The term is still used today, as scattered farms and villages sometimes refer to the Weald in their names.

I LOVE this game but I always feel like I'm treading water.

Excellent video! 'You're in charge of the management of the worst business in the world' describes Darkest Dungeon very well.

Imagine my surprise when I looked for a DD essay and hbomb himself was the first hit. Happy day

I’d enjoy this being revisited (due to age and new games) about the sequel, and especially about dwarf fortress.

Your description of why you loved Darkest Dungeon (i.e. that the real game you're playing is HR manager and that it invests you into the stories of the people you're managing) makes me think you would LOVE playing Rimworld. It's basically the same premise: you're managing a colony but the real interest comes from interactions between your pawns, what happens to them, and their tales of heroic success or abject failure.

If you haven't already, I think you should check out "This is the Police." It has a lot of the same elements you praised about Papers, Please and Darkest Dungeon.

This feels like a game where the suffering is the fun part

Many people fall in the face of darkness, but not this one, not today. That's my favorite line, I think, in the whole game.

2:38 That line made my day, because I see myself in that scenario! I just realised thats a sad thing, but whatever your videos are pretty good. Subscribed!

You explained it so well, I was talking to my friends about this but didn't know how to put it into words. My favorite part of the game is the heros and how they develop their own quirks and roles over time despite having very little story behind them. I hope the next game expands on this idea.

I didn't see this video until now. Thanks for making a Darkest Dungeon analysis, I love this game TwT

'If you didn't bring enough torches." Jokes on you. I play on Complete Darkness all the time. Good video though. This is an oddly unique channel - I like it. Do you happen to have a Steam account you'd like to share?

The papers please music is my ringtone. Hearing it in any context now brings up a feeling of dread. It really helped when playing the game.

It's funny looking back on this video five years later and seeing Red Hook *agree* with HBomb in how they're constructing the second game. In shifting to a much more traditional Roguelite format they've focused the game down to dealing with a small group of quite specific people with their own personal foibles, and actual personal relationships that you need to work with and adapt to on the fly. Darkest Dungeon 1 is clearly a brilliant game, and an achievement to be proud of, but it's equally clearly not exactly right for the emergent stories they wanted to make.

Why dint you mention Dwarf Fortress when it comes to ludonarrative? A game where you can write an entire novel about the story of your fortress its that deep.

I enjoyed Darkest Dungeon, but I didn't end up caring a lot about my characters in the end, since whenever one character died, it would just take a week or two for a guy who looks exactly the same to pop up in the hamlet, sometimes with the same randomly generated name. It also feels too game-y that you can simply remove any negative quirk that a character has. By comparion, I felt much more involved with the characters in the XCOM games, even though their character traits aren't woven to game mechanics as they are in Darkest Dungeon... but it really stuck with you when your grenadier made that one in a million shot, or a ranger panics on you but you have to take them with you on the next mission, anyway, and you were just waiting for them to lose it again. I think one big reason why Darkest Dungeon didn't stick that much for me is that losses don't feel that dramatic. When a hero dies, you simply grind a new one back to the level you need them to be, and when you lose a mission, you often enough still get big rewards if you managed to stay in the dungeon long enough. Maybe I'll have more fun replaying the game on NG+, since you get a limit on how many weeks you get to finish the game and how many heroes are allowed to bite it.

Death Road to Canada is an interesting one I think you'd like, if Darkest Dungeon is something you're interested in, DR2C explores the more hidden traits of people, but doesn't take the morality of it too seriously.

I realize this is now nearly 2 years late, however the "death" of Darkest Dungeons, at least on a personal level came when I stopped playing the game as a fresh faced noob and "got gud." As so many people in the DD community like to say. Within a little bit of serious time investment and a bit of research the game becomes a spreadsheet. With the understanding of things like stall tactics the game becomes a slow grind. At a certain point with the right knowledge of abilities, "meta" and abuse of game mechanics you become unkillable. The characters are no longer chosen for anything but their sheer usefulness, you exit nearly every fight with max HP and 0 stress. It's just a time consuming, slow grind to inevitable victory with only occasional hiccups of pure unfavorable RNG. In a very real sense if you get good at Darkest Dungeons and understand the optimal way to exploit the game it stops being a game.

This is one of my favorite games. The mounting stress of your characters affects you, and makes you feel stressed out. It really gets to you.

Man, I work in a HR of a company. Great perception. Gave me tons of insights. I have to go back and play all over again with this perspective.

Ludonarrative is a new word to me. When I first encountered the phenomenon, it was known as emergent story(telling). It's one of my favourite things and games that do it well are automatically on my to-buy list. I guess I'll need to check out Darkest Dungeon.

This video helped me fall in love with so many video games

Subnautica also has a fantastic ludonarrative for a completely different reason. You are in the shoes of Robinson as he tries to survive on an alien planet. When he gets scared, you get scared. When he makes a discovery, you feel intrigued. For a guy who stays completely silent (other than gasps or grunts of pain when he gets injured), he's extremely relatable. Playing this game, you know exactly what he's going through.

Ooh, the one horror game I really like. Also a case study in how classic D&D works when at its best.

One moment that will always stick with me, is when I was doing common hamlet managing and sending a unit to a psychiatric guard and for some reason THAT time I sit to read how I was eliminating the "calm" quirk... And then it hitted, probably more than 100 hours in I sat for the first time since I started getting a grasp on how to play to think about the implications of my managing, and then everything started flooding in a stream of memories of how I sent people to die to the crow to recover trinkets and kick them out without a farewell if they survive, how horrible the psychiatric guard must be when I send someone in every week that I could, how I let heroes die Just so I could recover the rewards of a big fight before leaving. On one hand I felt a scary feeling on how I was able to do things like that from my own free will without even processing it, accompanied with a sense of guilt over what I have done... And on the other hand I felt how cool and well played from the game it was for the natural learning curve of the game to lead to this moment and trusting the player to eventually let it sink in.

Dude even your videos from 8 years ago are great!

Good video. I had passed up Darkest Dungeon because I didn't understand what it was *about*. This vid has encounraged me to give it a try. BTW the game you mention there might be room for with the slightly less mechanistic trait/quirk/flaw system might be "Rimworld"

I have never felt more emotionally drained than after a session of darkest dungeon. I usually have to set it down for a bit before continuing.

You'll be pumping more videos than sargon at this rate.

I've been paying Papers Please recently, and yeah, it's one of those games I wouldn't call "fun", because it's oppressive and depressing, but still an interesting experience.

I've read the older RPGs did that. Like Wizardry 7, Baldur's gate series and System Shock, where the the immersion was created from from your actions, and that way, you became the part of the story.

I've got a couple good stories about heroes I've had in Darkest Dungeon. The first is Thorel, the Houndmaster. He and a few other heroes went to fight Vvulf. The problem? Everyone else ended up dying (some of stress, some of blades to the vitals). But not Thorel. Time and time again, he defied the reaper's call. Hound's Harried Vvulf to death. Thorel survived, leveled up, and gained: Lygophobia (negative quirk related to darkness), Tough (increased health, a fitting quirk), and the Worries disease (more stress, also very fitting). The other story is not quite as thrilling, but still amazing to me. He died in the first room battle of a quest, which was unfortunate. He had Twilight Dreamer which lets him see invisible enemies. However, wanna know what event greeted me upon returning to the Hamlet? The one that lets you revive three random guys. AND ONE OF THEM WAS THE BOUNTY HUNTER!

I think the "cold hard numbers* could be fixed with more vague descriptions. Instead if "alcoholic" we hear his mom tell us he drinks too much. The truth is muddied through an extra channel, with room for bias etc to get in.

Please make more review videos you are really good!! I played this game months ago and now i came across this video

The game isn't about leading a party to defeat the darkest dungeon, it's about killing as few mercenaries in the process of trying to do so

Darkest Dungeon is a game about cracking open an Old One with the boys

Kevin is a plague doctor... that MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. KEVIN.

Honestly wish I was so easily amused. He cracks up at everything like the “nymphomania” thing. Guess I’m just dead inside.

6:00 I come from the future. DD2 explores the individuals more.

Lugo-narrative discodance

"Axe, Sword, Mace, or DOG" - made me laugh so hard 😂

Great gods, I adore the atmosphere and artstyle of this game. And some of the btilliant mods, particularly the Buried class mod.

Okay, I'm even more convinced you should play Invisible Inc now - an INCREDIBLY under-appreciated, sublimely-designed game by the makers of Mark of the Ninja and Don't Starve, and sadly overshadowed by DST's success. Let me do a pitch for it: Invisible Inc is an indie cyberpunk tactical turn-based stealth game where you play as the Operator of a small team of spies infiltrating corporate facilities, and it's something like a roguelite stealth blend of XCOM and Commandos. The facility maps are procedurally generated, and in most missions your agents teleport into a random spot on the map, scout out the rest of it and escape through the exit - ideally completing the main objective and looting things along the way, but this is very much a game where, much like in Darkest Dungeon, just getting out with all or most of your party still alive can be a "win". Unlike in XCOM or most stealth games, you're ultimately outgunned and outnumbered by enemy security and beat the enemy with some combination of stealth (based on line-of-sight and cover mechanics), items, weapons and sometimes just throwing an agent at them as a sacrificial lamb to buy the rest of your team that extra turn they need to escape. While the game isn't story-heavy as such, there is a main plot and oodles of lore (expanded substantially by the Contingency Plan DLC) about the agents and the not-too-distant-future corporate dystopian, post-war world the game is set, much of it unlockable as a reward for specific side objectives or only found in item flavour text or dialogues between agents if you have specific ones on your team. The fact that the agents whose lives and actions you're in charge of are pre-designed characters rather than random NPCs with randomly-generated names and templates makes you get even more attached to them. They each have their own backstory, unique abilities and even oneliners and banters, but to you, the Operator, they're ultimately just tools to be used. The campaign is short but the kicker is in replaying it over and over, using different agents, hacking programs, items and strategies. In the Lisa video you mentioned that some games are incredibly good at inspiring others and rousing the imagination. This is that game, for me - I've made fanart, I've written fan stories, this game even inspired me to take up modding and programming literally for the first time in my life because I was having so much fun adding to the experience to squeeze even more hours out of it. I've had dozens of campaigns by now and there are still moments that are crystal clear in my memory, down to the randomly-generated map layouts, because of tough situations they presented when I had to carefully choose how to spend my limited resources that turn to get the maximum amount of intel to make an informed choice, and still be able to actually make that choice. It is the ultimate intelligence game - intelligence in the sense of an asset, something you need before you make a tactical decision. You're always limited in how much you know about the enemy, but getting more intel can be costly and sometimes the best choice is just to try to do the best you can with what you have. It can get very stressful - in a good way - and the feeling of clawing it out of a situation you thought was unwinnable by the skin of your teeth is amazingly exhilarating. And then sometimes you get all those triumphant moments, and five turns from then or the next mission or the next day the campaign still goes down the drain, and it's always on you. Because you didn't play your cards right, or you made the wrong call at a crucial time, or you got greedy and completionist and sent your team for that last remaining safe (unnecessary, but holding sweet cash that will let you get stat and gear upgrades and make you more likely to survive later on!) instead of going for the exit even though alarm level was already at maximum, cough, just a random example that's totally made up, I promise. It's really just an amazing game and I wish more people would know about it. It deserves oodles upon oodles of videos analysing its gameplay and all the ways it perfectly achieves what it sets out to do. I hope you give it a try.

Just as you rolled for your quirk and began cackling my sound card died and I thought that the resulting audio meltdown was on purpose at first. Instead it was most likely discord opening that ruined something. As for the characters feeling a bit by the numbers I suddenly thought about adding relationships between npcs and maybe go a bit more in depth with particular cures/remedies for their afflictions/vices. Alchoholic? What do they like to drink? etc etc.

One reason I like this game so much is that it reminds me on dungeons & dragons. Which I play since my childhood

Ah Darkest Dungeon about being a CEO and turning people into glue before replacing them with new hiers.

Papers please is one of the best games ever made. The fact that one guy made it is so incredible

It's been 5 years since this video but I have to leave this comment just to say: I finally started playing Darkest Dungeon a few days ago and the whole fucking time I've been instinctually referring to the vestal class as the "simpsons hentai" class while also treating it like each vestal's name, and I hate you for it

So it's a high stakes middle-management position.

"Bad on the inside, where my heart should be". Felt that one.

You damn sadist, you made me play this game. JK, make more videos, love them!

Great video, thx very much ! Maybe we can think of a system like the one in The Shrouded Isle, where you have to investigate time and so ressources to figure out what are your partners quirks ! But nice game design idea, tho :)

Very interesting, I hadn't heard of this game before now.

Everytime I lose my mind over my lvl 6 Leper shouting abuse at his teammates and then getting bitten to death while my best fighter is still missing with the stupid question mark next to their face... I come back here because I feel understood

Fun fact: building a bank basically engages easy mode, interpretation is up for grabs on that one...

This video represents the game perfectly

6:59 I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about the Bioshock series as a whole, especially when it comes to ludonarrative. I know Clint Hocking wrote his article about it back in 2007, but I personally feel that Infinite got a lot more praise than it deserved

It is so weird seeing an old hbomberguy video and it's not 4 hours long.

then i noticed he's got at least three guys all named "kevin"

This game is about crying about your hard earned mercenaries getting verbally abused by their teammate after you forget a shovel.

don’t wanna do a whole essay I’m sure it’s been done before but the change from dnd 4e to 5e was a change in focus from combat under pretence of narrative to like 50% ludonarrative even within those combats

Just got this game after wishlisting it because of this video 3 years ago. I renamed everyone members of my family and friends. Boy does it get awkward when my mother becomes a nymphomaniac.

The best is when you get a hero who has both the "thick blood" and "thin blood" quirks for simulatenous -10% bleed resist and +10% bleed resist

Your point about the heroes’ traits in darkest dungeon being too telegraphed to be realistic can be addressed in a terrifying but ultimately effective way; keeping the trait hidden until it’s relevant. Much like real life, you won’t know someone’s an alcoholic until you see them sip from a flask at work. You won’t know someone’s does fantastic in a tomb until you send them there and they’re very enthusiastic. I think this is can, in a way, already be a thing in the game; your characters traits gained at the end of a dungeon is maybe not always something they developed while underground but perhaps something they had all along.

I can't wait to find out about the game you're making! You named the white knight "me" :3

I'd like to mention how often far-right ads are put in front of your videos and how goddamn funny that is: It's really fucking funny.

Ah, yes, enslaved stress increaser

"The combat system is easy to metagame and optimize." - Says a man using really, *really,* suboptimal(almost throwaway) stuff... Other than everything mechanical you talked about, 'tis a pretty nice vod.

I played that game ALMOST to its end. I made it all the way to the Darkest Dungeon, having done everything else, all without losing a single hero and then... I just couldn't bring myself to finish the game. I wasn't ready to risk my perfectly preserved heroes on a run where retreat meant that one of them died. So... I literally never finished it. I watched the runs on KZfaq, as done by someone else, uninstalled the game and never touched it, again. I am not sure if that was the maker's intent, but I wonder if I am the only one who reacted this way.

When I'm short on money in darkest dungeon, I recruit a bunch of low level heroes and do a couple of pitch black runs with them with close to no supplies, and then just sack them instead of bothering to relieve their stress. Damn this video made me think about real-world parallels to this tactic...