Darkest Dungeon dev says the game's difficulty was inspired by tabletop RPGs and the movie Aliens

Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike RPG with a reputation for being relentlessly challenging. In a new interview with Eurogamer, the game’s co-creator Chris Bourassa elaborates on the game’s punishing nature, and what inspired that.

Bourassa says that the concept behind Darkest Dungeon was to explore what it would actually be like for someone to take on the role of a dungeon explorer, and how that would affect them: “You see what happens to people when they get very stressed out. We’re no exception. Some people rally and handle this distressing pressure really elegantly, other people kind of buckle. Some people get loud, some people get quiet. And we were like: there’s a real opportunity to explore these ideas within a familiar kind of fantasy setting.”

Bourassa cites tabletop roleplaying games as another influence, especially in how “RPGs are more interesting when things go wrong”. He also mentions the movie Aliens with its darker themes and struggling protagonists. Or as he puts it, “just any kind of situation where people were put under extreme pressure and [you see] that character arc of suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer and then sometimes people rally and hold themselves together.”

The original Darkest Dungeon is currently available on the Nintendo Switch eShop. As for its sequel, Darkest Dungeon 2, Bourassa says console versions “haven’t announced yet but I’m sure people can infer that they’re coming”. Stay tuned for more info.