Darkest Dungeon 2 will launch in early access on October 26th

Darkest Dungeon 2 will launch in early access via the Epic Games Store on October 26th. Developers Red Hook announced the date via Twitter earlier today, after first announcing a 2021 release date in October of last year.

Here’s the tweet:

Darkest Dungeon II (Early Access) is coming to @EpicGames on October 26th, 2021!

Wishlist now: https://t.co/CSbqzrvldU#DarkestDungeon2 pic.twitter.com/LoWOEGgy4e

— Darkest Dungeon (@DarkestDungeon) September 13, 2021

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Darkest Dungeon 2 will have similar turn-based combat to the first game, in the same grimdark fantasy world, albeit now rendered with 3D character models that nevertheless maintain the same handdrawn style. The Epic Games Store page doesn’t contain any particular details, beyond the teaser trailer released last year, and embedded below:

Back in March, Imogen spoke to game developers about their enduring love for the early access process, including folks from Red Hook Games. “The first month after [Darkest Dungeon’s] launch was like, ‘Oh my god, we did it! We’re gonna be ok!’ And then all of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh. Oh we really did it. And now we have all this extra crazy work that has nothing to do with producing the actual game,'” said creative director Chris Bourassa.

Other developers credited Darkest Dungeon as pioneers, with Supergiant co-founder Greg Kasavin saying that Darkest Dungeon “started to change the perception of what an early access game could be.”

Hopefully all those lessons learned will be applied to Darkest Dungeon 2, with as positive an outcome as Joe Donnelly described in his Darkest Dungeon reivew back in 2016.