Darkest Dungeon might seem yet another turn-based strategy mixed with roguelike elements. But compared to other games, Darkest Dungeon is extremely challenging, layered with hidden elements that decide the randomness of the battle. Darkest Dungeon is as rewarding as it is punishing.
A new feature called stress level creates a new difficulty curve for players, making the game more challenging in a world filled with chaos and unpredictability. Darkest Dungeon is truly a one-of-a-kind game, but we can always search for similar games to fill the desire for wanting more after completing campaign mode.
Selecting Best Games Like Darkest Dungeon
Let’s break down the elements of Darkest Dungeons to analyze the genre, art style, and gameplay mechanics and list out the best games like Darkest Dungeons containing all such elements.
- Roguelike: Due to various elements catering to the randomness of the Darkest Dungeon, the game is considered Roguelike. From its permadeath characters to randomly generated dungeons, the Darkest dungeons are widely criticized as well as appreciated for their grueling difficulty.
- Dungeon Crawling: It’s the meat and potato of the game. Darkest Dungeon places the highest priority on the dungeon crawling genre and also adds its remarkable twist that suits the wretched settings within its random rooms containing uninviting loots.
- Turn-Based Strategy: Players might overlook the Darkest Dungeons’ deep gameplay mechanics that are hidden beneath the simple turn-based strategy, but once the battle begins, players find a complex game of survival and strategy while dealing with various enemies.
- Visual Aesthetic: The Darkest Dungeon art style is brooding with high contrast and thick brush strokes that screams the deadly horrors hidden beneath the black shadows. With its tone-down colors that perfectly suit the dark fantasy world, Darkest Dungeon gives the creepy vibes of unsettling events.
- Role Playing Game: Just like the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game, Darkest Dungeon has you controlling four characters, each with their own strength and weakness. With seventeen playable characters, including DLC, you can mix and match their powers to make the ultimate team lead through treacherous Dungeons.
Best Games Like Darkest Dungeon
Considering all these things, we have assembled some of the best games, like Darkest Dungeon, for players to revisit another area of the grim world and explore its untapped elements that make these games similar to Darkest Dungeon.
Darkest Dungeon 2
The list could not be complete with the inclusion of Darkest Dungeon 2. The Influential predecessor has made a victorious comeback with all new 3D art, improved animation, a new battle system, and a whole new way to play the game.
Each hero now has their own story to tell as you progress throughout the campaign. The most noticeable change done in fight mechanics is its relation status. Similar to the fear level, Darkest Dungeon 2 also has bars representing the relationship with each other members.
The game is relatively easy compared to its predecessors, and the campaign is also short with replay value. With each update, DD2 is thriving for peak performance.
Dungeon No Dungeon
Heavily inspired by Darkest Dungeons, Dungeon No Dungeon is more like the Lite version of Darkest Dungeon with strong chibi characters and body health mechanics where each body part has its own health bar.
With great character skill designs and a good turn-based strategy, Dungeon No Dungeon keeps the gameplay fresh. With each update, developers are constantly polishing its mechanics and adding new characters and maps to the game.
It’s a pretty good game to pick up and play if you are into RPG mechanics and turn-based strategy.
Iratus: Lord of the Dead
A roguelike dungeon combined with turn-based strategy combat that is set in a dark medieval world filled with skeletons, necromancers, witches, and many more. You play as Iratus, whose primary goal is to lead an army of undead up to the surface and conquer the realm by destroying mortal enemies.
You have a number of customization for crafting powerful minions by collecting items through defeating enemies. Although your army can permanently be gone for good when they are defeated during battle, you can always build new minions with the resources you gather from defeating enemies.
Unlock spells, create new allies and build a new structure to march your way to victory in Iratus: Lord of the Death.
Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
A pixel art style takes players back to the classic turn-based strategy style like final fantasy. Legend of keepers has you take the role of a guardian against adventurous travelers exploring dungeons and seeking treasures.
Corporate dungeon security managers hire you to defend their dungeons, and you can deploy monsters with their own resistance to damage types that strategically deepen the fighting mechanics.
This game has some excellent visual elements but repetitive backgrounds. Although some flaws need to be sorted out, the game delivers decent gameplay for players who seek to play for fun.
Vargus – The Riven Realms
Vargus – The Riven Realms is set in the post-apocalyptic world of a fantasy empire where gods have devastated the lands due to an increase in human greed. A tile-based world sandbox game where stories are portrayed through text and paintings while characters battle turn-based strategically.
It’s very difficult to get into the world of Vargus due to its vast land, deep lore, and unforgiving difficulty curve, but once you pass the basic fundamentals of what the game has to offer, it becomes a really great experience exploring the world of the RIven Realms.
Players should keep in mind that Vargus is a narrative-heavy game, and there is a lot of content regarding managing a lot of aspects of the game. Defend your caravan from roaming undead and other bandits as you explore the wasteland from one apocalyptic place to another.
Banners of Ruin
Banners of Ruin is a turn-based party strategy game set in an anthropomorphic world of the medieval age. A deck-building game where you collect and execute attacks and abilities by pulling out the cards with specific attacks to deal damage to your opponent.
Take down the city of Dawn’s point as you defeat the house of Enders and keep marching forward to revive the noble House Blackfoot. Lead the army of six characters and build them strong as you progress through the game.
Each stage lets you choose from the three options where you can recruit players, obtain new abilities or advance to a new location. Customize your characters to equip new and powerful weapons to infiltrate the city. Banners of Ruin is a well-polished game that deserves more attention from players.
Deep Sky Derelicts
Dwell into the futuristic world as you traverse from one spacious room to another, collecting loot, defeating enemies, and clearing rooms. Explore the procedurally generated spacecraft, build the rogue team, expand their skills, raise their experience level, and provide sweet weapons to kill space aliens.
The art style is directly inspired by superhero comics, where dialogues and attacks are executed on panel-based comic pages. It feels like reading a comic book or a Sci-Fi game.
The gameplay tactic is also deck-based combat, where players have to build the strongest deck to advance forward in exploring the unknown area of the spaceship.
Guide your team of three throughout the dungeon-like space room to repair the space and bring back the navigation but be aware of malfunctioning robots and creepy aliens.
Vambrace: Cold Soul
The game is set in the cold world of Icenaire, where the King of shades has cast the curse on the city of Icenaire, and it’s your mission to destroy the mad wraiths and return the city to its former glory.
Vambrace Cold Soul regards as the Darkest Dungeon for its gameplay mechanics and dark tone. There are two types of gameplay, exploration, and combat.
In exploration, you are given the top-down view where you traverse around the taverns and campsite of the icicle towns where combat is played pretty much as Darkest dungeons where you control the team of four players to defeat enemies of the dungeons to reach the boss area.
WARSAW
Set in the despairing time of world war two, Warsaw puts you into the shoes of Polish soldiers against the oppression of the Nazi army. A turn-based strategy game where players have to defend their homeland against the troops of German soldiers portraying the desperate story of events in Warsaw.
Meet citizens and civilizations from all walks of life and gather them to prepare for battle. Our different heroes also have different abilities that players can apply in battle, such as healing allies, long-range attacks, and splash damage that deals damage to a number of soldiers at once.
One unique feature includes the thought placement of characters during battle. Players can place strong heroes front and center while assisting heroes behind the rubble to take less damage. This adds varieties in combat with tactful combat.
Relieve the moments of world war two through the reconstructed map of Warsaw of 1944 and fend Nazi soldiers back to where they belong.
Mad Crown
Mad Crown has some bizarre set of characters along with alienated-looking mutant enemies. As the game is set in the world of dieselpunk, where the evolution of humankind is based on diesel-based technology, You go on a mission in search of the legendary Crown of God.
The similarity between Mad Crown and Darkest dungeon comes alike with its roguelike elements such as permadeath, gathering resources, and tactical survival because of the unforgiving nature of the gameplay.
Items and abilities are in the form of deck building where players have choices to use card abilities and affect the tides of battle with the range of cards they obtain through procedurally generated dungeons.
With its ten playable characters, players can build a team of four players to fight through a large number of enemies and expand their arsenal of attacks.
Mistover
Mistover has visual elements of a JRPG and also maintains the balance of challenging players through combat as well as capturing their attention like Darkest dungeon.
Set in the fictional magic world filled with monsters that appear from the interdimensional portal called “the Pillar of Despair,” your mission is to destroy the pillar and make the world a safe place for humans to live.
Just like Darkest Dungeon features like stress level, you are tasked to balance the discord between satisfaction and greed while exploring through misty dungeons that lower your visibility. Every turn you take has an impact on your allies in this hardcore game of turn-base strategy.
Into the Breach
The game gets insanely difficult as you move your army of mechs against alien-like creatures in a grid-based battle arena. Into the breach is a kind of game that is surprisingly challenging but also rewards you with pleasurable joy after finally executing the strategy for the ultimate victory.
Every Island has different puzzle mechanics that requires thoughtful execution of your three mechs while deploying them into battle. The battle arena also deploys a randomized set of enemies, making the game unpredictable.
It’s a tactful game of placing your mechs on the grid and dealing ultimate damage to enemies before getting hit. Thankfully the game allows the player to undo moves from the destination back to the old place before landing any attacks.
Just like Darkest Dungeon, Into the Breach is extremely difficult, and randomized enemies along with environmental hazards do not ease up the game. But the satisfaction of defeating every enemy and completing a run makes the game worth playing.
