Darkest Dungeon is coming in January

Let's be honest: If any of us had to fight through a dark, fetid dungeon crawling with monsters, shambling coffin dodgers, and worse, we'd probably lose our minds and our lunches. That simple fact is the basis for Darkest Dungeon, a dungeon crawler in which "flawed heroes" must deal with stress, famine, disease, despair, fear, and other such human frailties, on top of the usual menaces inherent to subterranean treasure quests. It blew the doors off its Kickstarter in early 2014, and has been on Steam Early Access since February of this year. And on January 19 of 2016, it will finally be released in full.

Developer Red Hook Studios had initially hoped to have the game out this month, but said in today's Kickstarter update that doing so "would mean rushing our endgame content out the door—a move that would ultimately not be in anyone's best interest." The date was thus moved to December 1, but the recent death of Creative Director Chris Bourassa's father-in-law led to the decision to push it back further.

The team plans to drop an "interim patch" near the end of November that will add a new playable hero called The Abomination. The hero will be properly revealed in the coming weeks, but for now Red Hook said "this bloodthirsty class is unlike anything currently in the game." The patch will also include a pair of "decidedly unsettling backer-designed monsters," and various sorts of other "goodies."

Evan got some hands-on time with Darkest Dungeon back in January, and expertly demonstrated how the game's psychological elements work to influence the characters during combat—which is to say, he got his ass kicked. It's obviously not an easy game, as evidenced by Red Hook's decision in August to let players turn off heart attacks and corpses (if only it were so easy IRL), but this still looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.