Remember Darkstone? Probably not. It’s one of many Diablo-likes of the 1990s largely forgotten today like Revenant or, er, one of the other examples I could come up with except for the fact I seem to have forgotten them as well.
I remember Darkstone because, while a fairly generic fantasy hack-and-slash, it had a few features that marked it out. For starters, while it did have multiplayer, you could also play solo with a sidekick—a full second character with their own class, skills, and inventory, who you could switch to whenever you felt like it. The CPU did a decent job managing them when you weren’t, but as someone who frequently regrets picking the “wrong” class in an action RPG, it was great to know you had a backup choice.
In addition to that it had some wonderful music, atmospheric loading screens, randomized quests, and an oddball dedication to realism. As well as managing a hunger bar that would constantly decrease if you didn’t regularly stuff apples and chicken legs into your player-character’s portrait faces, you also grew older as the game went on. Eventually you’d end up with experience point penalties and lowered stats, though potions of youth were common enough it rarely became a big deal. By the time your characters hit 30 they could guzzle a jug of magic botox and reliably de-age themselves back to 20.
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While Darkstone’s been available on digital storefronts for years, it doesn’t run well today. The music stutters, the framerate drops if you dare to play it in fullscreen, the UI’s hard to read—it’s a mess. Fortunately it’s coming back in a remastered version called Darkstone Restoration, with development led by original creator and producer Paul Cuisset.
The remaster promises to have “improved stability, compatibility, readability, controls, and quality-of-life improvements” and “potentially the restoration of other important parts of Darkstone’s legacy, such as modernized network functionality and a new Quest Editor”. The latter additions are up in the air based on how well the initial release does in early access.
Yep, it’s coming to early access. Which seems like an unusual choice for a remaster, though Darkstone Restoration promises “Early Access is being built around a real, playable game experience rather than an early prototype.” Though it doesn’t have a release date yet, you can keep up with Darkstone Restoration on Steam.
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