At PAX East 2019, we had the opportunity to get hands-on with a relatively unknown indie game, Darksburg. Darksburg is currently in development by Shiro Games and is inspired by games such as Diablo, Left 4 Dead, and various M.O.B.As. Although we only had a short time with the playable demo, the game left us eager to play more. With only a short 30-minute demo to grasp the basics of the game, we were only able to try three of the four playable characters. At the moment, only 4 characters have been revealed, however, more will be announced within the coming months. By the end of PAX East, Darksburg was nominated for a Best of Show Nomination award.
Darksburg is a top-down zombie survival game where players must work with teammates to clear the level. Similar to Left for Dead, the player does not need to kill every zombie to move on but it is encouraged to kill those that get in the way. The game features at least three other mechanics inspired by the Left for Dead franchise. At least two health items could be found throughout the level. The first health item is a bandage that works similarly to the pain pills and then there is a green potion that is similar to the medkits in L4D. The next core mechanic inspired by the co-op classic is the horde event. In one instance, the players alerted the horde when trying to cross a bridge. The heroes then had to defend until a ferry arrived.
Darksburg focuses predominately on team communication and cooperation to overcome the overwhelming forces. Allied hero locations are only shown as heads when the characters are not shown on the player’s screen. As the characters move away the indicator gets further. This allows teams to keep track of each other visually, similar to what many of the Lego games used for those co-op modes.
In the demo, we had the option to choose between four characters: Varag, Sister Abigail, Runolf, and Rose. Varag is werewolf creature who pounces on foes and is the main tank. Runolf is a tank that looks to cure his allies of illness and starvation. Sister Abigail is a holy cleric that can control the zombie waves. The final character is a ranged marksman named Rose who can shoot through zombie waves and jump over foes.
Although there are only four characters currently available, the game features a variety of enemies. Besides the standard zombies, players will have to take on special zombies and level themed bosses. Although the special zombies did not have an identifiable name that we know of, they did have special abilities that stood out. A few of the specialty zombies had aggravating abilities such as spewing flames, summoning other zombies, or could drag off allies from the team.
Overall, the demo ran rather smoothly and left us craving more. Darksburg does have a scale-up difficulty that encourages players to further learn how the game works. The name of the game is survival and teamwork here. Darksburg also reminds us of the Gauntlet Legends series that many loved. Darksburg looks to be an amazing dungeon crawling adventure that will bring teammates together.
We look forward to when Darksburg releases sometime in 2019 on PC.
