Darkhaven Demo is now available on Steam and provides a hands-on experience of the new upcoming APRG title. While it’s still a pre-alpha build, the game does its best to deliver the features announced during the showcase. These include a new movement style, dynamic biomes with intractable environments, and more.
If you’re simply looking for the playtime, with proper grind, it’ll take you around two hours to complete the quest. However, there is a lot more to explore, so here’s everything I noticed during my playthrough of the Darkhaven Demo.
Darkhaven Demo showcases the game’s potential
You start by selecting either online or offline mode. I chose the latter, which took me to the character screen to select one of three starter skills. Blood Lash immediately caught my eye due to its ability to pull and mana gain, but it also has a bonus stun feature. Of course, you can unlock the remaining ones later using skill points.
The game will load you near a fast travel point and a vendor who’ll give you the trial quest. There is no tutorial, so you just follow your instincts and the quest marker. Over the three hours of gameplay, I explored multiple dungeons and managed to defeat the boss of Necropolis.
As mentioned, this is a pre-alpha Demo for Darkhaven, meaning that over the course of its development, there will be a lot more changes. That said, here is my impression of the game from the demo.
- The Darkhaven Demo features multiple dungeons, a decent-sized map to explore, and multiple enemy types.
- You have an adjustable camera with a 360-degree view that you can rotate using the Q and E keys.
- The visual clarity in the dungeon is a little low, as enemies easily blend with the environment, making them hard to spot and threatening.
- While in a dungeon, the game also provides a top-down view if you are in the corners while exploring a dungeon. Since I was playing in single-player mode, pressing ESC also paused the game, which, along with the top-down view, is a neat QoL.
- Leveling up will also defeat smaller enemies nearby and grant you five attribute points and one skill point. However, the most notable thing is the movement. Similar to Diablo 4, there is a dash button to make distance, but in Darkhaven, you also get a double jump, which is a key part of the combat and traversal.
- During fights, you can avoid various attacks by simply jumping over, and I found myself jumping around a lot. Paired with the Blood Lash skill, you can also apply stun to take down stronger enemies.
- Dashing and attacking while mid-air is also possible, which makes the combat a lot more fun.
- For recovery, you have the standard health potions similar to Diablo, but there are also crystals growing in the open world that recover both HP and MP. Enemies can also drop orbs that replenish health and mana.
- As for the annoying bits of Darkhaven, opening the inventory does not cover the screen, but instead moves it across the other side, which can make you dizzy.
- You can also swim across a river or lake, but don’t do it while being chased, especially by enemies who can swim faster or have ranged attacks. Your character is vulnerable while in water.
- Your attacks can carve a way through the environment, allowing you to explore new routes. And speaking of the environmental changes, during the quest, you’ll come across a part where the boss will start expanding Necropolis throughout the map, and it will slowly start turning areas into a graveyard with even stronger enemies, which was extremely fun.
On a 3060 Ti at high settings, my FPS counter was around 100. However, there were some big performance dips when there was too much action on the screen. Changes in a dynamic environment or a big enemy horde will tank FPS, but I assume it will get fixed throughout the game’s development. And since it’s an open-world game, there’s also a good bit of CPU usage alongside the GPU.
Overall, the Darkhaven does have a lot of potential to be a popular ARPG. While the movement isn’t unique, you rarely see jump and swimming mechanics across popular isometric ARPGs, and it gives the game its identity alongside the dynamic environment. The Kickstarter for the game is now live and has surpassed 1/5 of its funding goal.
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Edited by Mayank Singh Rathour
