As of the time of this writing, Dark and Darker Mobile is now available for pre-registration on iOS and Android devices via Google Play. Check out all the details via the game’s official website.
Developer IRONMACE’s ‘Dark and Darker’ popped into early access back a year ago (amidst a bit of legal turmoil before finding itself back on Steam early this July). A multiplayer dungeon-crawling slash extraction slash battle royale title of sorts set in the backdrop of a medieval fantasy, its quickly found itself a fairly sizeable following thanks to its addicting gameplay loop and intense combat sequences between other players and environment, with a bit of “anything is fun with friends” sprinkled between. Currently available on PC as a free-to-play title, Dark and Darker is something you should at if looting with a grand escape is something that calls to you.
Now I actually haven’t played Dark and Darker myself—rather that, I’ve gotten around to publisher KRAFTON’ version of the game. ‘Dark and Darker Mobile’ dropped into “Closed Beta” earlier this month and ran til the 11th. Well, it was more “open” than closed as anyone with an Android device could simply download the client and join the test. iOS users were unfortunate enough that they had to put up with Test Flight nonsense, which I thankfully don’t need to put up with, but I digress. After being pinged about a potential shiny new phone game to put my aging phone to the test, I said “why not” and downloaded the client.
What I got was a rather exciting if not occasionally frantic 3D dungeon crawler and I kind of want to play some more.
The Dungeons of Riches
Loading into Dark and Darker Mobile, the first thing you’ll be doing is watching a brief intro cutscene detailing the world of the game. Best I can from it is that the dungeons have riches but are very dark and are filled with vile monsters—that includes your fellow man as well, who will hunt you down for your inventory. After that, you’ll be picking a class and run through some brief character creation stuffs. There’s not much here at the moment besides faces and a couple of hairstyles, but a female thief with a bit of red hair was all I needed to get going. A couple of menu tutorials and you’ll then face your first foray into the dungeons.
Dark and Darker Mobile is what I’d best describe as a PvPvE 3rd-person extraction dungeon-crawler. You and up to six other players are dropped into a dungeon of your choosing and are tasked with looting the place of its riches. You’ll find these in chests, on the persons of NPC enemies that roam the map and, of course, the belongings of other players should you choose to hunt down others in a match instead. No matter how you choose to loot the dungeon, you’re on the clock—there are several phases of “darkness” that close in on the map. Just like a storm circle, it’ll keep you moving and eventually into the hands of other players if you’re not careful.
Once you’ve had enough of the dungeon, you’ll need to escape. This can be done by looking for exits that appear on the map right after the second darkness phase. They’ll pop up as tiny blue dots on the map and usually come as a set of stairs or an exit portal that will need time to unlock. Escape successfully and you’ll take your hard-earned goods back to the main menu, safe and sound. Not so lucky? You’ll lose everything in your inventory on the spot. The stakes are seriously high.
On to more specific gameplay details, you move your toon around in tight 3D environments, with but a couple of lights to guide the way. Movement is slow and heavy and even as a thief, you’ll need to pace your attacks and get out of the way whenever possible. Environment enemies such as skellies and goblins can be dangerous, but nothing is more unpleasant than being ganged up on by multiple players.
As almost every action requires you to focus for a bit, such as opening doors and chests, there’s plenty of opportunities for someone or some creepy thing to shred you to bits when you least expect it. Fortunately, I was able to play the game with my trusty G8 Plus and, though the game didn’t quite have support for controller glyphs, I was able to at least work my way around and not take in an unexpected shank. The game ran quite well on my Galaxy S20+ as well and I never felt I was at a disadvantage thanks to a high frame target, even if my ping was often in the triple digits.
Friends and nonplayable mercs can join you in your ventures, so after the tutorial you’re more than welcome to group up and take on some of the more dangerous dungeons. The game grades dungeon difficulty based on armour rating, or how good the armour you are wearing is. The deeper into a dungeon you choose to go, the more you should be prepared. And that’s where the main menu comes into play—this is your home destination, where you’ll buy and sell goods found in the dungeon, handle social needs, head into the village to do some fishing and gathering, all that good stuff.
The menu is plentiful and honestly, kind of hard to read on a phone. There’s a lot of text descriptions for items that I did have to squint at quite a bit. Especially when it comes to inventory management as swapping between inventory and stash space can be a little annoying when the boxes are as small as a zoomed-out Minecraft inventory menu. I can’t recall UI scaling options being present but I do hope we can see that in the final game.
But I digress, selling things will be your lifeline as an adventurer. Buying and renting lost gear is important too, and there are merchants that handle all that, no problem. The more business you do with a merchant, the more they get to know you through this bond system of sorts, reducing prices on commonly bought goods and the like. The aforementioned stash system is incredibly important as well—as all items in your inventory are lost on death, it’s imperative that you store anything of serious value in your stash. Like all inventory-heavy games, Dark and Darker is happy to let you know that you’ll be carrying a lot of things and sooner or later, you’ll need to buy more space. How fair this system is remains to be seen once the game launches.
And the village is one of your other stops. The village is a full 3D hub where you can freely hang around, gather materials left around, and do my favourite gaming activity: going fishing. This hub offers a nice change of pace to what is otherwise a fairly stressful game. The fishing is as simply as you’d expect, simply drag your fishing line towards the green bar as it slips and slides from right to left on your screen. Do it enough times and the carp is yours. It’s no Action Bass, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Dark and Darker Mobile is a solid 3D dungeon crawler for mobile phones. At the low price of free, what you get is a coop-friendly adventure game with a decent variety of weapons and skills at your disposal to get out of even the most difficult of situations. Matches don’t last long and I found it to be the perfect time waster between bus stops. I’m looking forward to the game’s full release and I might even get around to checking out the full PC game, seeing as KRAFTON’s version is likely more of a bite-sized version meant for on-the-go gaming.
You can give the game a whirl if you’re at gamescom—simply stop on by, it’s right next to the Xbox booth.
