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Darkest Night in Review

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MB Updated May 23, 2019
 
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Darkest Night

Game Information

Game Name
There Will Be Games

Hey look! A co-op fantasy adventure game!

Darkest Night, designed by Jeremy Lennert and published by lovable underdogs Victory Point Games, doesn’t sound terribly interesting at first pass. I’m almost reticent to lay out the objective facts about the game regarding its process and mechanics out of fear that they’ll put you to sleep. But stick with me. It’s worth it.

Darkest Night is a one to four player co-op adventure game that draws inspiration from Arkham Horror and similar titles. Players represent various fantasy character types with special powers that they will have to employ to combat various monsters, events and other threats that pop up on the board by rolling dice. The storyline is that there is an Evil Necromancer up to some necromancer-ly hijinks, represented in the game by a simple automation process whereby he moves from location to location on the board and spawns Blights – both physical enemies and more abstract adversarial forces representing themes such as despair, confusion and presences.

The goal is to find Holy Relics. Each requires that the heroes search for and locate three keys. Each one makes the Necromancer easier to battle, but if the good guys find four of the Holy Relics they win the game automatically. But the heroes lose if the Monastery, their base of operations and the last bastion of all that is good and sacred in the world, becomes overrun with Blights.

Bored yet? Sleepy? Wondering why I’m bothering with this game? Hang in there, we’re getting to the good stuff.

With all that is hackneyed about the game out of the way, I’ll tell you that Darkest Night is one of the best games in its class even though it isn’t nearly as novel or compelling in terms of setting as VPG’s classic Nemo’s War or as maverick as something like Shadows of Malice. There a couple of things that this game does that are novel and compelling and really quite unique, even though you might be lead to believe otherwise at a first impression. I’ve come to love this scrappy little game- especially as a solitaire outing where I can really dig into it at my own pace.

First and foremost, the way this game handles characters- and there are a TON of them across the base game and four expansions as of this writing- is bold, brilliant and their diversity generates a wildly different strategic matrix for players every game. There is more to the characters than the usual D&D-derived character classes thanks to unique Power card decks that drive the actions each player can take. Coming from games such as Talisman, these classes are well beyond what you might expect in terms of delineating the difference between a Rogue and a Druid. Because each one plays very differently and due to the random nature of how the Necromancer spawns blights, this results in a tremendously variable game where characters may or may not have certain utility based on these powers.

I love it the crazy variety in how these all play out, and even in a game with the same character you played last time you might wind up with different powers, resulting in a fresh experience. I think it’s thrilling to sit down with four random characters and see what happens in terms of how their powers interact with the game. More than that, I love that some classes are literally useless in some aspects (which means you’ve sometimes got to be creative) while others serve functions that are very unique (which means that you’ve got to work out how to use them effectively). The Prince for example, is really kind of a lousy fighter. He’s much better at hiding, inspiring your other characters and operating almost like a monarch in exile. The magic users all vary greatly, most have specific rules and card types unique to their practice. Some characters are great at supporting others, some are your go-to members when battle calls, some are best suited to searching for treasures and others do crazy things like teleport other characters around, summon beast companions and sing songs.

There is quite a lot of satisfying complexity that comes with all of these characters, but the basic process of the game is super simple. If you’re not at the Monastery and the Necromancer isn’t in your space, you draw an event card. These are usually bad, and many have a die roll check to determine their effect. If the Necromancer is in your space, it could be worse as he may find and fight you. And then you take just one action, barring any free actions afforded by your powers or other assets. You can travel, hide, attack a blight, search the area or use a power. At the Monastery, you can pray. If you have three keys, you can take a Holy Relic.

There are some interesting things going on here with the strictures. Moving to another location (there are only six) is exclusive from attacking, which is how you get rid of the Blights. And most Blights have either an area effect that impacts the location or they automatically attack your character at the end of your turn, and it’s a defensive kind of battle. You don’t clear them off the board if you win. You have to choose an attack action to vanquish them. This creates some tough choices in terms of movement, staying in safer areas or marshaling a Knight or a Paragon over there to take care of the problem. And, interestingly, there are situations where some characters actually do better by staying put for virtually the entire game. For example, a character with powers that affect searches might contribute the most by staying in areas where keys are more likely to turn up when the Map cards indicating search results are drawn.

Avoiding Blights altogether is also an unexpected element. Players may just completely stay away from battles at all, opting to move in the shadows and not directly confront the creeping evil. And it turns out that this is actually indicative of the game’s biggest concept both in terms of theme and in its fiction- you aren’t fighting the Necromancer head on, you’re waging a kind of guerilla war from hiding. It’s obviously inspired by Lord of the Rings, where the Fellowship spends much of the journey trying to stay out of Sauron’s sight, and it works very effectively in Darkest Night. Almost every encounter allows you to choose combat or evasion, and it’s often better to just run away.

Players have two trackers on their character sheets- Grace and Secrecy. You lose Secrecy by doing things like choosing to fight Blights, encountering Spies and carrying Holy Relics- all things that attract attention. But they can gain it by traveling, hiding and generally staying on the down-low. Secrecy is how the Necromancer’s awareness of each character is tracked, and maintaining this secrecy is critical to winning the game. This is also how the Necromancer’s movement is triaged. A die roll over a character’s Secrecy means that he comes that way, and all players that start their turn in the Necromancer’s area lose a Secrecy. If player has zero, the Necromancer fights him in a battle pretty much unwinnable without at least one Holy Relic. The game has a way of creating a sense that characters with low Secrecy are being tracked down, hunted and overcome.

And eventually, you will be overcome because this can be a pretty tough game. There’s a lovely little bit of unexpected nomenclature in the game. There are no hit points or lives. Instead, players have Grace. The rulebook describes this as being an almost mysterious ability for heroes to preserve in life-or-death situations, to be given another chance. Lose a battle, you are defeated. But you may have the Grace to carry on. It’s a minor thing, but I like the tone it generates.

I appreciate how the game strikes a favorable balance between mechanical economy and a multilayered, compellingly diverse range of powers and effects. These, in conjunction with the stealth concept and some unexpected mechanics, make for a great narrative line every game. The last time I played, I had a Scholar posted up in the castle, doing research to learn new powers and find artifacts that he could share with the other three heroes. But his secrecy gradually ran out, because the Necromancer moved that way and posted up some of his spies there. Eventually, the Scholar had to flee to get his Secrecy back because he was exposed. I’ve had characters partner up because of synergies in their powers. I’ve had games where the party did best sticking together and groups that were just doomed from the start.

Some games have been naturally harder than others that were almost too easy. Some have been anticlimactic, and others have been down-to-the-wire nailbiters that ended with do-or-die turns. Some will not appreciate the volatility. There is a lot of die-rolling, card-flipping and general randomness on top of the variety introduced by the characters. And it is possible for a player to wind up feeling like there’s nothing effective that they can do given a particular game state. But frankly, after playing this game with two groups of three and four, I’ve found that the solo game is really the best experience here.

I wanted this game for a long time before finally capitulating to an irresistible sale of the Necromancer Bundle, which includes the first three expansions. I was interested mainly because I like Victory Point Games and I wanted to see their take on the big, epic fantasy co-op. But I did kind of feel put off by the ho-hum setting and concept. It turns out, as is often the case with VPG titles, that there’s more here than you might expect. It says so right on their box- “The gameplay’s the thing” and that’s what distinguishes this fine game from its peers. The gameplay is top notch, driven by a uniquely diversified range of player characters and subtle twists on the usual formulas.

And the expansions just improve it. (To be continued)

Michael Barnes (He/Him)
Senior Board Game Reviews Editor

Sometime in the early 1980s, MichaelBarnes’ parents thought it would be a good idea to buy him a board game to keep him busy with some friends during one of those high-pressure, “free” timeshare vacations. It turned out to be a terrible idea, because the game was TSR’s Dungeon! - and the rest, as they say, is history. Michael has been involved with writing professionally about games since 2002, when he busked for store credit writing for Boulder Games’ newsletter. He has written for a number of international hobby gaming periodicals and popular Web sites. From 2004-2008, he was the co-owner of Atlanta Game Factory, a brick-and-mortar retail store. He is currently the co-founder of FortressAT.com and Nohighscores.com as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Miniature Market’s Review Corner feature. He is married with two childen and when he’s not playing some kind of game he enjoys stockpiling trivial information about music, comics and film.

Articles by Michael

Michael Barnes
Senior Board Game Reviews Editor

Articles by Michael

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Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #208918 20 Aug 2015 19:33
Thanks for the review, VPG games easily slip under my radar.
ThirstyMan's Avatar
ThirstyMan replied the topic: #208921 20 Aug 2015 20:54
So overall, this is better, more thematic than Pathfinder? I don't have either but I'm tempted to pull the trigger on this one.
Michael Barnes's Avatar
Michael Barnes replied the topic: #208974 21 Aug 2015 15:18

ThirstyMan wrote: So overall, this is better, more thematic than Pathfinder? I don't have either but I'm tempted to pull the trigger on this one.


100% yes. It also has quite a bit more depth, yet it isn't very much more complicated rules-wise. It's really a pretty compact game. I would definitely rate it over Pathfinder. Which is, BTW, one of only two games that I think I over-rated when it came time to write the review. The other was MEQ. I kind of don't ever want to play Pathfinder again, although I did really enjoy it for the period that I was into it. Just no desire to return to it.
Feelitmon's Avatar
Feelitmon replied the topic: #210727 15 Sep 2015 22:02
Barnes. Dude! Darkest Night fucking rocks.

It had been in the back of my mind for a while and your review prompted me to do some more research on the game, which led to my buying the Necromancer Bundle and the two remaining expansions. At this point I've played it twice solo and I can't wait to get my buddies into some sessions. There is so much to appreciate about the game, from its design to its presentation. The game mechanics are elegant and easily teachable, the graphic design is spare but beautiful, and the art is excellent at conveying the desperate and yet heroic tone of the game's setting and events.

One of the things that I most appreciate about the game is that it generates striking stories and vignettes without relying on flavor text. I don't have anything against flavor text but it's neat to play a game that has so little of it and yet is so thematically satisfying. These stories emerge from the interplay between character abilities and core stats, random events, the activities of the Necromancer, and your own decisions as a player. Here, I'll give an example from my first game. Anyone not interested in a geek geeking out about geek stuff should stop reading now. Fair warning!


In search of clues to the whereabouts of a holy relic that would be crucial in defeating the Necromancer, our Wizard had travelled to some ancient Ruins that sprinkled one corner of the kingdom. While there he received word that the peasantry were in a panic because something was snatching their children in the middle of the night and leaving no trace behind. The Wizard used his ability to turn invisible to track the creatures back to their lair, sneak in undetected, and spirit the children away to safety. The experience changed his outlook, and he realized that with the proper attack spells he could have defeated the creatures outright. This epiphany prompted him to master the devastating Fiendfire spell. Later he discovered a straggler from the original group of kidnapped children, and once again the Wizard used his invisibility to rescue her. He decided to put an end to this atrocity and assaulted a vast host of animated skeletons with his Fiendfire, reducing them all to ash. Sifting through their remains he found regimental insignia on some of the skeletons' armor that indicated that the most recently animated corpses had served the king, while living, in the Mountains on the opposite side of the kingdom. What could have kept them alive longer than their brothers had in the face of the Necromancer's foul magic? After paying his respects at an ancient altar he teleported to the Mountains to investigate this lead.

Now the mechanics of what happened there:

Round 11 Event Phase -- The Wizard starts the round in the Ruins and draws the Panic card, which has you draw a Quest card, roll for its location, and immediately add an hourglass token to it to indicate that it is already a bit closer to expiration. He draws the Without a Trace Quest card ("Something is stealing children from the local populace without leaving any witnesses. Track it to its lair or you will lose the sympathy of the townsfolk.") and randomly determines that its location is the Ruins. This quest can be resolved by taking a quest action in that location and then successfully eluding an Awareness 6 opponent. Failure to resolve the quest in time costs all heroes 2 Secrecy; success gives the questing hero an Epiphany, which lets them search their powers deck and learn the power of their choice.

Round 11 Action Phase -- The Wizard takes a quest action, then activates his Invisibility spell to help with the challenge. This gives him +2 dice (3 dice total, in this case) when eluding, but will exhaust itself automatically if he ever fails in a fight or uses another attack spell. Rolling 3d6 (looking for individual values rather than summing their total) he tries to match the Awareness rating of the challenge (6) and succeeds! This means that at least one of his three dice came up as a 6. The quest is completed and for his reward he learns the Fiendfire spell.

Round 12 Event Phase -- He draws the Rescue event card, which is an immediate challenge to either fight with a target number of 5 or elude with a target number of 4. With his Invisibility still active from last round he chooses to elude, rolling 3d6 (again, just looking for the highest individual values rather than summing the dice) and succeeding. The reward is a slight increase to his Grace.

Round 12 Action Phase -- The Wizard attacks the Skeletons blight that the Necromancer placed in the Ruins at the end of the last round. By attacking the blight the Wizard must fight a target number 5. He exhausts his Fiendfire spell to roll 5 dice and he succeeds, destroying the blight. This satisfies the Into the Dark mystery ("You can uncover critical secrets of the darkness if you can defeat its local manifestation.") that had been in place in the Ruins for several rounds, giving the heroes +3 Clues the first time a blight at that location is destroyed. The heroes need 10 clues to track down the location of a holy relic, and this leaves the group at 9 clues.

Round 13 Event Phase -- The Wizard encounters an Altar event, and his card-dictated roll determines that it is a Pure Altar. This gives him the ability to spend 1 Secrecy to gain 1 Grace, which he does.

Round 13 Action Phase -- The Wizard exhausts his Teleport spell to gain 2 Secrecy and move to the Mountains, which are the location of another Mystery card that may give the group enough clues to find a relic.


So maybe it was just me but when I played out that sequence the story just came alive and it was so easy to imagine the action unfold. And there have been quite a few other similarly evocative sequences just in the two games that I have played so far. From the Priest's Sanctuary spell flashing like a beacon so brightly in the Village that the Necromancer is practically summoned to the trap that we had laid for him there, to the Exorcist condeming a vicious blight so forcefully that the unnatural darkness afflicting the entire region is actually pushed back a bit, to the young Prince inspiring the Wind Dancer to perform so potent a dance that she summons a hurricane that annihilates several blights from the kingdom... man, it's cool. And a mechanically sound, fair, challenging, AT/Euro hybrid co-op to boot.

Yeah, Barnes, if we ever meet I owe you a drink for this recommendation.
Michael Barnes's Avatar
Michael Barnes replied the topic: #210730 16 Sep 2015 01:42
Ha ha, glad you liked it! My review Thursday is for all four expansions...I agree with a comment someone made here that they kind of feel like patches for the base game, but regardless- they make a great game better. It really does make a great narrative every game, and the characters are all really interesting to explore.
wkover's Avatar
wkover replied the topic: #210791 16 Sep 2015 18:16
Do the expansions make Darkest Night a whole different game? Even I'll admit that 'base game' pizza is better with the sauce expansion, the cheese expansion, and the pepperoni expansion.

Anyway, I played DN once (2-player) and thought that was plenty. For the price, there are so many better games available - Eldritch Horror, for starters.

Hmm...could be that DN fills a niche as an amazing solo game - is that the draw? I'm just curious.

Edit:

Re-reading the posts above, I'd also add that - for me - Pathfinder has turned out to be the one of the best family-style games ever released. But as a solo game? I imagine it would be mediocre at best.

Some games just have to find their audience, I think.
Michael Barnes's Avatar
Michael Barnes replied the topic: #210793 16 Sep 2015 18:37
Let's hold on that to tomorrow. In short, yes, I think I does and I actually think it is a much better solo game than a multiplayer game. It's very different than Eldritch Horror or even Mage Knight, which would be the other top games in its class. But Eldritch Horror would be the one that is a better multiplayer game than either of its peers.
Feelitmon's Avatar
Feelitmon replied the topic: #210811 17 Sep 2015 03:33

Michael Barnes wrote: Let's hold on that to tomorrow. In short, yes, I think I does and I actually think it is a much better solo game than a multiplayer game. It's very different than Eldritch Horror or even Mage Knight, which would be the other top games in its class. But Eldritch Horror would be the one that is a better multiplayer game than either of its peers.


I'm looking forward to tomorrow's column, but that won't stop me from chiming in with something tonight. First of all, the expansions are amazing and I'm very impressed at how they expand the gameplay in natural ways. I haven't played without them and I don't intend to, so I guess the downside there is that it's about a $120 game after shipping and tax. Adjusted for inflation that's how about how much I paid for stuff like Wing Commander way back when, and I was dirt poor. I'm fine with that price for something like Darkest Night.

Regarding group vs. solo, I haven't played it with a group yet so I can't speak from experience on which mode works best. However, my intuition tells me that Mr. Barnes is correct on this, or at least that Eldritch Horror lends itself to communal play more than Darkest Night does. I think that Darkest Night presents the characters as a tiny team that is working in a relatively small area. The game's scope and mechanics reward good coordination of the characters' actions, which of course is great for solo play. In Eldritch Horror I get much more of a feeling that our characters, while certainly working together on the same side, nonetheless are pursuing their own adventures as part of the larger effort. In most of the Eldritch Horror games that I've played my character rarely even meets more than one or two of the others. This plus the globetrotting action seem to make Eldritch Horror very well suited to group play.

TLDR: In Eldritch Horror you play B.A., Hannibal, Face, and Murdock. In Darkest Night you play the A-Team.