Dark and Darker will hold one more playtest in April

The subterranean extraction hack-and-slasher Dark and Darker was a huge hit during the latest Steam Next Fest—in fact, it was one of the biggest things on Steam. I didn't get to spend as much time with it as I wanted (I was distracted by the excellence of Weird West) and so I'm very happy that developer Ironmace will give me, and everyone else, another shot at it in April.

After thanking players for their help, Ironmace said the most recent playtest gave the studio "a lot of clues on how to proceed with development," but also raised "some important questions that need to be answered." As a result, it has decided to do another round of playtesting before a planned launch into early access.

"We hope to test some pretty substantial additions for this playtest that requires a bit more development time than in the past," the studio said. "Therefore, the next playtest is scheduled for April 14-19th. We know the extended down time between the playtests may be disappointing to our fans but we will work our hardest to make the next one even better than before."

The April session will actually be Dark and Darker's fifth playtest. An early access launch date hasn't been announced.

Based on its Steam performance, and our own enthusiasm for it, Dark and Darker has a bright future. But it's also facing allegations that the game is based on a cancelled Nexon project called P3, and actually makes use of assets and code stolen from that game. Ironmace CEO Terence Seung-ha recently denied those claims, stating that "absolutely no stolen assets or code were used to make our game" and that, to the best of his knowledge, "you cannot copyright a game genre."