GamesA year after Dark and Darker became one of the biggest games on Steam, a newcomer is trying to steal its thunderWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesA year after Dark and Darker became one of the biggest games on Steam, a newcomer is trying to steal its thunderWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
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One year after the Steam Next Fest demo for Dark and Darker becomeone of the biggest games on Steam, another extraction-dungeon-crawler calledDungeonborne—first teased in September 2023 asProject Crawl—is replicating the feat with gameplay that looks a whole lot like its predecessor.
It’s rough in spots right now: Connectivity issues were a problem when the demo first went live, although that part of it seems better now, and complaints about balance are common in the Steam discussions: The fighter class in particular is overpowered at the moment, at least in part because movement is quite slow across all classes, which gives the big armored guy with a huge sword a natural advantage when it comes time to throw down.
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
Despite its obviously pre-release state, Dungeonborne managed to crack the top 100 on Steam with a peak of more than 17,000 concurrent players, not bad at all for a largely unheralded debut game from a developer I hadn’t heard of previously. What I find particularly interesting, though (and what may explain part of its success) is just how much like Dark and Darker it is.
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To an extent, that’s unavoidable: Traditional dungeon crawlers all bear a number of familiar elements, and the extraction game formula is pretty well carved in stone at this point. At a casual glance, though, I’d be hard-pressed to tell one from the other—there are differences, of course, and there’s also plenty of discussion on just that topic on theSteam forums.
But the similarities run deep enough that developer Mithril Interactive clarified last year that “we have absolutely zero affiliation with Nexon,” the publisher that sued Dark and Darker developer Ironmace—and forced the game off Steam—over allegations that the studio used stolen source code and assets to build the game.
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(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
(Image credit: Mithril Interactive)
Also potentially interesting is how Nexon and Ironmace will react to all this. Stylistic similarities are unavoidable in the world of videogames—as we said when Project Crawl was first teased, “the videogame zeitgeist can push a lot of similar ideas to the forefront simultaneously”—and Mithril’s preemptive “no connection” statement indicates that it’s well aware of just how much the two games are alike.
Nexon presumably has no standing to object against Dungeonborne, but will Ironmace perhaps take issue? I am not a lawyer, as they say, but I do wonder if some future courtroom declaration that Dark and Darker is in fact a fully original project might prompt Ironmace to try some legal action of its own against Mithril.
For now, if you’ve been waiting for Dark and Darker to return to Steam so you can return to dungeon-extracting with maximum convenience, well, this isn’t it—but it’s pretty damn close. TheDungeonborne demowill be available until the end of the Steam Next Fest, which wraps up on February 12.
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