Dark and Darker Mobile is an upcoming RPG from PUBG publisher Krafton that’s aiming to give players a unique experience on mobile devices. It’s an extraction game that combines elements of battle royales, dungeon crawlers, and RPGs to keep gameplay fresh and give players that “one more run” feeling.
“You are a beginning adventurer going into the dungeons,” said Joonseok Ahn, the Executive Producer and Head of Production of Dark and Darker Mobile. “The setting is of a medieval, low-fantasy world. It’s about competing and exploring in the dungeons.”
You can choose one of six different classes for your character: Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, Ranger, or Barbarian. Each class has different stats and skills that shape their combat style, with some classes focusing on melee attacks, others ranged, and others on magic. But classes that broadly have similar styles will have inherent skills that change how they engage in combat.
“There are active skills and passive skills. For example, as a Fighter, if you block yourself with a shield, then you’ll gain an advantage,” Ahn said. “We’ve also differentiated the armor of each class. For instance, a Fighter or Cleric will wear something metal, and a Wizard will wear cloth.”
Gameplay sees you dive into dungeons with the goal of gathering as much loot as you can and escaping. You can form a party of up to three members, either by grouping up with friends or recruiting AI-controlled mercenaries to help you. You can meet and recruit mercenaries of different classes, and they’ll level up with you as you explore dungeons. You can then promote them, allowing them to learn new skills or increase their equipment level.
Monsters roam the corridors of each dungeon, and killing them will reward you with more loot. But be careful, because your fellow players are trying to secure that loot too. They can catch you unaware and attack, prompting PvP battles to the death.
“That is the biggest advantage we have for Dark and Darker Mobile — it is a competitive, progression-based dungeon crawler,” Ahn said. “We started from the notion that there really aren’t these kinds of swordplay-based extraction games in a classic medieval RPG setting. We believe we are defining this genre as a pioneer.”
Monsters and fellow players aren’t the only threats. Each dungeon will have unique traps you need to keep an eye out for, and you’ll also have to contend with the Darkswarm, a constantly encroaching darkness that will kill players caught within it. This is where the battle royale elements come in. Where the Darkswarm will shrink is unpredictable, forcing players to adapt on the fly. And as it shrinks, it forces players into smaller areas, making PvP encounters inevitable.
When it’s time to face off with your fellow players, it’s not all about brute strength. You need to strategize, consider the weapons being wielded by yourself and your opponent, and how you can use the environment to your advantage.
“We have a physics-based combat system. You can find that in many console and PC games, but not as much in mobile games,” Ahn said. “For instance, there are interactions with the terrain or objects. So if you swing a big weapon, then you can get stuck in the terrain.”
As you explore each dungeon, you can find escape portals that will allow you to evacuate with whatever loot you’ve gathered. Or you can choose to stay in the dungeon to gather more loot, but if you die, you lose everything. That risk vs. reward system is at the heart of the choices you’ll have to make during every run.
Ahn stressed that community feedback has been vital as he and his team continue refining Dark and Darker Mobile. The game had two rounds of beta tests, and the team has talked to regional focus groups to get as much feedback as possible.
“The motto of our development is to gather as much user feedback as we can, which is why we were engaged with two rounds of beta tests,” Ahn said. “We will open a Discord developer channel and gather feedback, and then apply this feedback to our updates. We try as much as possible to incorporate all the feedback to show that it’s reflected in the build itself. As an example, based on the first beta test, we incorporated feedback in the second beta test that was well received by users. Developers will be very open to communicating.”
Dark and Darker Mobile is scheduled to release later this year. After release, they plan to have seasonal updates every 6–8 weeks that introduce new classes or new maps. Stay tuned to IGN for more news in the lead-up to release.
