Darkest Dungeon and how not to get psychological stress

The player controls a group of adventurers exploring various locations on the territory of an ancient estate. Before each campaign, the player must select four heroes from the barracks and guide them through randomly generated (except those that are scripted) dungeons, collecting treasures, family heirlooms and destroying various monsters along the way. The player is tasked with fulfilling the task condition and, if desired, saving the lives and mental health of the heroes. The level of psychological tension (stress) increases every time the heroes receive special blows from enemies, fall into traps, interact with some curiosities, retreat from the battlefield or unsuccessfully rest in the camp; if a fighter loses his nerves, he falls into one of the many psychoses, starting to behave inappropriately,

Darkest Dungeon, inspired by the work of Howard Lovecraft, addresses themes of fear and psychological trauma. The connection of Darkest Dungeon with Lovecraft's horrors includes both specific images and more general themes characteristic of Lovecraft's work — fear of the unknown, loss of reason and the insignificance of man in the face of cosmic forces.

The game's key developers, artist Chris Bourassa and game designer Tyler Sigman, have known each other since 2004, when they both worked at Backbone Entertainment. Sigman, in addition to working in the computer game industry, was involved in the development of board games and owned a small company Mythrole Games; Bourassa started out as an indie developer, but then for many years worked as a contractor for major studios, in particular, on the eventually cancelled game Propaganda Games Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned. Bourassa and Sigman have been thinking about creating their own indie game for years, putting forward various ideas by brainstorming; among these ideas was the idea of Darkest Dungeon[. In the spring of 2013, they founded a new studio, Red Hook Studios, with the idea "now or never", hoping that the game they were developing, Darkest Dungeon, would be able to win a small but loyal audience that would support the studio's work further.[/b]

By 2015, the studio had six full—time employees and three freelancers - sound engineer, composer and the only voice actor Wayne June, who acts as a narrator in the game. When planning the development, Bourassa and Sigman hoped to meet a year and a half of development, but the creation of the game took longer. Funds for the creation of the game were raised through crowdfunding through the Kickstarter website; although the developers set only $75,000 as the minimum goal, they managed to raise four times as much — $ 313,337. Bourassa developed a peculiar artistic style of the game, imitating such comic book artists as Mike Mignola, Guy Davis, Chris Bachalo.] and Viktor Kalvachev.

Downloadable add-ons:

1. The Shieldbreaker - A small addition that adds a new Shield class to the game, new game mechanics (for example, stealth) and a number of other minor improvements.

2) The Crimson Court - The release of the first major addition, The Crimson Court, took place on June 19, 2017. It adds a new location to the game — the Courtyard — and its associated enemies, as well as new mechanics that further increase the difficulty of the game. The plot of the supplement is dedicated to the young years of the Ancestor and the vampire aristocrats. The theme of vampirism has been unusually reinterpreted — new "bloodsucking" enemies that appear from time to time in other locations resemble a cross between humans and mosquitoes, ticks and other bloodsucking insects. The new flagellant fighter can both heal other characters and deal heavy damage to enemies, causing them to bleed. The "crimson Curse" is a special disease that heroes can become infected with, both when bitten by a bloodsucker on a camping trip, and from one of the already infected characters if they are nearby in a tavern or confessional.
3) The Colour of Madness - The downloadable The Color of Madness add-on was released on June 19, 2018. A meteor falls on the manor, which turns some of the villagers into zombies. The expansion adds new dungeons and new monsters to the game. A key part of the expansion is a new game mode called "Endless Harvest", where players must survive as long as possible under the onslaught of waves of monsters. The plot of the supplement is clearly based on Lovecraft's short story "Color from Other Worlds."

In February 2019, Red Hook Studios gave an interview on the PC Gamer website and announced that it is currently working on Darkest Dungeon 2. It is known that the supernatural apocalypse (invasion of monsters) will take place all over the world, and not just near the estate, as in the first part. The developers reported that a much larger staff is working on the second part than on the first. Darkest Dungeon 2 will be available in Early Access first. The developers say that thanks to this, players will have the opportunity to play faster and financially help the studio.

Wait, I will definitely play the second part and write a review on it too)

I recommend buying the game.