Dark Delivers on Stealth Action Roleplaying Promise - Hands-On Preview
The game opened with an extended multi-night scene as our characters utilized their skills to case the target house. Our historian character dug up some family history that the Drurys had with the faerie kingdoms. Our engineer character found out that the guildsmen who were digging underneath the house had been recently fired after uncovering a new chamber. The casing process was simple - you just told the gamemaster you had so much talent in say, Engineering or Fellowship and were rewarded with a set of information. Our casing complete, we jumped to the evening of the job and started chewing through the house. The infiltration was quite fun, and incredibly tense. We knew that the House's cards could cut our crew of thieves - even my badass warrior - apart because they had both numbers and armor on their side. On the other hand, we owned the dark, and if someone crossed our path there I could easily take them down. Our face-man social character conjured up a priest's disguise, beguiling and distracting several servants with the story that he was here to consecrate "the new basement" - all the while the other characters slinked by while the servants' backs were turned. Every play of cards felt like a chance for something to go horribly wrong, because each time we took a "turn" we gave the gamemaster a chance to do the same, tracking the pre-mapped patrols of the guards and the actions of the servants. Eventually we made it to the basement - looting a pantry full of priceless spices on the way. I won't spoil what we found there, as Alveswick Manor will be a published adventure for Dark some time in the future, but I can say that it made me more confident and interested in the early renaissance aesthetic that Hindmarch is cooking up.
The demo I played was a really satisfying game, with a tight feel and a tense play. The playing card aspect felt like sometimes it dictated how you played your character, but in the end you were really just living up to the kind of person you had made. The game shows early promise, but we won't know for sure if it can deliver the same tension and excitement through long term play - which it intends to with rules for the folks hunting the thieves as they become more and more notorious. Dark is expected to finish development and be commercially available both electronically and in print in Quarter 1 of 2015.
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The game opened with an extended multi-night scene as our characters utilized their skills to case the target house. Our historian character dug up some family history that the Drurys had with the faerie kingdoms. Our engineer character found out that the guildsmen who were digging underneath the house had been recently fired after uncovering a new chamber. The casing process was simple - you just told the gamemaster you had so much talent in say, Engineering or Fellowship and were rewarded with a set of information. Our casing complete, we jumped to the evening of the job and started chewing through the house. The infiltration was quite fun, and incredibly tense. We knew that the House's cards could cut our crew of thieves - even my badass warrior - apart because they had both numbers and armor on their side. On the other hand, we owned the dark, and if someone crossed our path there I could easily take them down. Our face-man social character conjured up a priest's disguise, beguiling and distracting several servants with the story that he was here to consecrate "the new basement" - all the while the other characters slinked by while the servants' backs were turned. Every play of cards felt like a chance for something to go horribly wrong, because each time we took a "turn" we gave the gamemaster a chance to do the same, tracking the pre-mapped patrols of the guards and the actions of the servants. Eventually we made it to the basement - looting a pantry full of priceless spices on the way. I won't spoil what we found there, as Alveswick Manor will be a published adventure for Dark some time in the future, but I can say that it made me more confident and interested in the early renaissance aesthetic that Hindmarch is cooking up.
The demo I played was a really satisfying game, with a tight feel and a tense play. The playing card aspect felt like sometimes it dictated how you played your character, but in the end you were really just living up to the kind of person you had made. The game shows early promise, but we won't know for sure if it can deliver the same tension and excitement through long term play - which it intends to with rules for the folks hunting the thieves as they become more and more notorious. Dark is expected to finish development and be commercially available both electronically and in print in Quarter 1 of 2015.
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