Dark and Darker's competition is nearing its early access release, and you can try it now for free.
Dungeon-crawling extraction game Dark and Darker has company: An open beta for the very similar Dungeonborne is underway now on Steam. An exact duration for the playtest hasn’t been set, but the plan is for it to last a week or two, after which Dungeonborne will launch in early access.
It’s one of those betas you can join by hitting a button on the Steam store page to request an invite. You won’t have to wait, though: The playtest is open to everyone, and I was let in immediately and automatically after clicking the button.
Dungeonborne’s playtest hasn’t overtaken Dark and Darker on the Steam concurrents chart, but it has peaked at a respectable 14,448 simultaneous players, so it’s definitely competition.
I like the Diablo-like inventory and methodical first-person melee combat, although I’m becoming resigned to the fact that I truly suck at extraction games. I’m so nervous about finding an escape portal without being humiliated by a low-level monster that I’m totally helpless against more confident players who just chase me down like it’s a deathmatch.
At least my character, a skeletal cryomancer that I named BartSimpson, looks pretty cool. Dungeonborne’s eight classes offer the usual trade-offs—speed or health, damage or healing—and come with unique abilities, such as poor BartSimpson’s moveable, area-of-effect Ice Storm attack. I haven’t made great use of that spell yet on account of spending so much time running away from small bats and other things that are trying to kill me.
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
My favorite thing about Dungeonborne right now is how quickly I can get into a match. On the casual Clouseau Castle map, it only takes about 20 or 30 seconds between me clicking “Start” and the game starting. I think that really matters, especially in games that can end as abruptly and disappointingly as extraction games—quick restarts save it from feeling totally hopeless.
Granted, I may actually be hopeless. It’s not even players killing me anymore; I just got cornered and chomped to death by a mimic.
Meanwhile, after a legal fight got it booted off Steam in 2023, the original first-person extraction dungeon crawler, Dark and Darker, returned to the platform in June. Its free-to-play model was not received well—it’s more of a free demo—but the developers say they plan to “make amends,” and it seems to be doing pretty well, with positive user reviews and a spot among Steam’s top 50 most played games.
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