Dungeon crawler Dark and Darker has company: an open beta for the very similar Dungeonborne is now underway on Steam. An exact length for the playtest hasn't been set, but the plan is for it to last a week or two, after which Dungeonborne will be released into early access.
It's one of those beta versions that you can join by pressing a button on The Steam Store Page to request an invite. You won't have to wait, though: the playtest is open to everyone, and I was immediately and automatically allowed in after clicking the button.
Dungeonborne's playtest hasn't quite surpassed Dark and Darker in the Steam concurrent player charts, but it has hit a respectable high of 14,448 concurrent players, so it's definitely a match for the competition.
I like the Diablo-style inventory and methodical first-person melee combat, though I'm resigning myself to the fact that I'm really bad at extraction games. I'm so nervous about finding an escape portal without being humiliated by a low-level monster that I'm totally powerless against more confident players who just chase me around like it's a deathmatch.
At least my character, a skeletal cryomancer I’ve named BartSimpson, looks pretty cool. Dungeonborne’s eight classes offer the usual buffs and debuffs (speed or health, damage or healing) and come with unique abilities, like poor BartSimpson’s Ice Storm area-of-effect attack, which can be moved around. I haven’t made much use of that spell yet due to spending so much time running away from little bats and other things trying to kill me.
My favorite thing about Dungeonborne right now is how quickly I can get into a match. On the casual map Clouseau Castle, it only takes about 20 or 30 seconds from when I click “Start” until the game begins. I think that’s really important, especially in games that can end as abruptly and disappointingly as extraction games do — quick restarts keep it from feeling totally pointless.
Okay, maybe I'm hopeless. It's not even the players that kill me anymore; I was just cornered and bitten to death by a copycat.
Meanwhile, after a legal fight After being pulled from Steam in 2023, the original first-person dungeon crawler Dark and Darker returned to the platform in June. Its free-to-play model wasn't well-received (it's more of a free demo), but The developers say They plan to “make amends” and it seems to be going pretty well, with positive user reviews and a spot in the Steam top 50. most played games.
