Dark and Darker has just soft-launched on mobile, blending elements of RPGs, Souls-like games, and dungeon crawlers. While it’s currently available in Canada in soft-launch, a global release is looming on the horizon. Before you have a chance to leap headlong into the void, we’ve had the chance to try it out ourselves. This new mobile dungeon run is a spin-off from the big screen Dark and Darker that launched in 2023. Developed Ironmace and published by Krafton—the creators of PUBG—it immerses you in a dark fantasy world where survival is your only goal. Dive into dungeons with us as we choose our classes, battle mobs, and desperately cling to our loot in this PvPvE adventure that trades shotguns for swords and shields.
Class selection
There are 6 classes, each with their own style of play for deep in the dungeon. Each of the six classes comes with a selection of three active skills, basic attacks, and three passive skills from the moment they step into the action. It’s up to us to decide how we want to play when we go crawling in the dark for loot and glory.
While Dark and Darker Mobile borrows some concepts from Souls-styled adventures, your character doesn’t have to look tarnished. The Character creator in this small-screen expedition is something of a middle ground between big-budget MMORPG and copy-paste mobile adventures. Graphically, it is impressive for its size, with plenty of hair, eye, and facial sliders. A plethora of options are available inviting us to lose our way and get stuck on this side quest, before even looting any dungeons. While we spent most of the time looking at the back of a character’s head, a well-developed character creation screen is still a welcome sight.
Like any RPG or fantasy fighter, Dark and Darker Mobile lays out a range of character classes to try out a total of 6 options are on offer, each with their own playstyle and starting weapons, and they all handle distinctly differently.
Classes
- The fighter is a very traditional warrior class archetype. It’s all sword and board easy to control. Grab your sword and shield and get into the adventure.
- The cleric is still reasonable to control a natural healer and capable of wielding a crushing hammer blow when it is required
- The Ranger is difficult to control but provides more maneuverability and range than most of the class choices. Primarily starting with two different bows, it’s the ranged class you’ll want if you don’t like getting your hands dirty.
- The Rogue is a classic assassin. Quick, stealthy, and ready to get up close and gut your opponents in the dark. A mix of high risk and reward, but a payoff for the most skilled players.
- A Barbarian enters the dungeon if you feel up to just smashing things. The spears and two-handed axes mean you’ll wade into the fight and this comes as close as the game can to building a tank for crawling through this dungeon.
- The wizard is also included but locked on our early experience. As you’d imagine, this class selection is all magic missiles and lightning for a class we expect will be all elemental damage and little in the way of armor.
First Impressions
Like any decent dungeon runner, players preparing to loot or die will get an option to run through a basic tutorial. It’s also an ample opportunity for us to suss out the controls on the Fighter and find out if things really are easy-peasy dungeon squeezy.
After a quick narrative introduction to the world, it’s quickly evident that we were going to die a great many times! Underneath the tale of treasure, the core of the gameplay loop is easily defined as:
- Enter a dungeon
- Kill some creepy mobs
- Loot all you can
- Find an exit
- Head back to the Tavern
- Stash what you need
- Sell what you don’t
- Upgrade, level up, and prepare
- Enter the dungeon
It’s not long before new players are off to explore, and controls are instantly intuitive. A right thumb control moves the camera around 360 degrees, a left virtual analog stick moves the main character around the dungeon, and a small selection of virtual buttons to trigger the base skills, abilities, dodge, and block functions. Other interactive elements like looting doorways can be activated using the touch screen, making the early moments of this game all pretty instinctual.
A bunch of small extras make the transition into adventure all the easier to. The option to turn on the likes of auto loot also allows fresh meat to concentrate on combat and navigation around a dank arena, while the in-game map is an obvious but helpful way to plot a route to and from an extraction point. Even better, telegraphed enemy attacks and a visual representation for in-game audio are both genuinely helpful ways of overcoming some of the small screen restrictions that haunt many mobile ports. This makes it all the more confusing that somewhere along the line, the big screen legacy of this title still haunts areas like the inventory and skill slots. Prodding away at tiny menu icons and skill bars to activate potions or close menus just seems odd.
Dungeon Running
This early look at extraction dungeoneering threw us into the Goblin Caves, a solo dungeon where we cut through a mine full of goblins and subterranean horrors. Barely lit by more than a flicker of torchlight, this cavernous area looks the part. Dim corridors, low ceilings, and twisting tunnels occasionally sprawl open into rickety courtyards and dangerous kill boxes, but there’s an unrelenting gloom that plays into an established narrative. Along the way, skeletons, goblins, and assorted undead are dragged into the action, with the ever-present prospect of a powerful boss mob, another player, or an all-encompassing fog of war constricting your efforts to find a route out of the dungeon.
Similar problems await in the Forgotten Castle, a party-based expedition, and a creepy nighttime encounter in a crumbling fortress. The mix of abandoned courtyards and eerie tombs is rife with danger and feels far more interesting than the single-player Goblin Caves. In essence, the Forgotten Castle doesn’t do much different to the smaller scale player PvPvE experience but adds in two more adventurers to form party play and scales up the entire experience. More players, bigger monsters, and absolute carnage. In both instances no matter what variation of the map occurs, there’s a very familiar feel to both these encounters across Normal Mode, Hard Mode, Nightmare Mode, or Hell Mode. No matter the myriad of quests that can occur, and despite the ever-present danger of another player appearing to screw up hours of work, the play space feels like a linear Souls cut and paste at times. It’s fine, but hardly inspires. Thankfully, combat encounters are a thrilling distraction.
Combat
Adventurers looking to get out of these souls-styled dungeoneering adventures can choose a multitude of approaches, sneaking around, attacking first, or silently agreeing that everyone gets out alive. It’s unlikely that combat won’t occur, and it’s a mix of emotions. Combat in Dark and Darker Mobile is a free-form meeting of metal and magic. Whichever sword you swing or arrows you aim, you need to connect with something squishy. For the Fighter, that means balancing a sword swing with a choice to block or dodge. For a Rogue, that means choosing when to attack and run. Even if you’ve mastered a weapon, a new one might drop that makes more sense and you’ll need to work out the best strategy to change from a sword to a spear. This is the sort of balance by design that should reward skillful play, and it usually does. Dark and Darker Mobile controls are simple to understand with lots of variety between classes, but some odd glitches and some repetitive PvE encounters can undermine the quieter moments, while a lack of nuance can sometimes make controlling combat feel clunky.
Impressions
Despite all of this, there’s something undeniably fun beneath the surface. Dark and Darker Mobile isn’t as slick as some big screen extraction alternatives. Combat is still a little rough sometimes and there’s definitely a bunch of repetition, yet diving into dungeons still feels exciting. The air of danger never abates. There’s a risk to every door opened and each decision, Sneak up on another player, and there’s no guarantee you’ll succeed. Fighting fantasy never rolled a sniper rifle and memories of getting up close and personal in old MMO dungeons come flooding back. No matter the niggles, it’s gank or be ganked. It might be the nostalgia talking, but there’s an enjoyable anticipation to each run and this is a solid distraction from the unrelenting gacha obsession. I’m not quite sure that Dark and Darker Mobile is a must play quite yet, but it’s got enough moments of backstabbing entertainment in it that I’ll be heading back in and hoping i don’t drop all my loot. If you’re not in Canada then you’ll be able to pre register over on the official website to get looting across iOS and Android soon.
