Darkest Dungeon — Art Imitates Work (and vice versa)
I didn’t expect to find a parable of management and supervision in Red Hook Studio’s Darkest Dungeon, but in my hours of (incomplete) play so far, that’s where I’ve ended up. Players control a roster of adventurers delving into an ancestral estate, now an eldritch hub of gruesome activity. It is the player’s responsibility to manage the adventurers’ health, stress, light, and strategy as they dive deeper into their ancestral home, growing stronger through each successful mission. Simply put, as a game, it hits everything on the head: stats, planning, execution, a bit of chance and luck, all married with a grim aesthetic and haunting score. It is a good game. But what kept drawing me back was not the allure of eventually triumphing over the eponymous Darkest Dungeon, but wanting to watch my adventurers grow and become more, the same way I have tried to supervise people in real life.
Starting in Darkest Dungeon feels like starting a new job, or a new position. It is absolutely overwhelming and foreign. There’s a sense of complete information overload as the bottom third of the screen is overtaken by menus and numbers and abbreviations that, even after perusing the glossary of terms, still feels like a lot. I tread lightly in my first many rounds, trying to ensure survival, not victory. Things still weren’t making sense yet, and I didn’t want to needlessly sacrifice my team for “trinkets and baubles” that we’d uncovered.
In time, I would know the extent of the menu and interface. It would take many rounds. I would accidentally lose a few adventurers going in further than they were prepared for. But the numbers began to make sense. Abilities and attacks began to flow into one another. I knew the true value of provisions and preparation before embarking. There came a rhythm to my actions as I grew more familiar with everything, from the adventurers’ quirks and playstyles, balancing them out, to the cause-and-effect of certain actions. I hit that same flow I have in all previous work: everything begins foreign, and slowly begins to snap into place before making complete sense. The full potential of my adventurers came into light, as it does with my supervisees: with time.
One of the things I love most about rougelikes like Darkest Dungeon is their sense of progress, even in the face of the overwhelming. As I have with teams before, we have stared down seemingly insurmountable odds (albeit, not a violent pigfolk invasion) and stood against it, and at least come out with something: a tighter bond forged in the fires of administrative ineptitude, or in-depth experience on an obscure (but helpful) subject, or an opportunity to challenge ourselves and those that we supervise. Darkest Dungeon holds to that concept: progress is incremental and small, but progress all the same. A short and easier dungeon delve will yield rewards all the same, which can be used to slowly build up and strengthen the Hamlet (the hub area where characters can grow stronger and heal). Many of those delves will snowball into a more veritable hoard to properly fund longer expeditions and equip stronger adventurers. Even incomplete progress, by abandoning a quest partway to save my adventurers, would still net me everything I’d put into the inventory. Retreat was never a total loss.
But what clicked with me most was the sense of progress in loss. Even making it to an area boss and subsequently getting wiped out, despite my best efforts and preparations, was still a form of progress. I knew about the boss now. I was just a bit more familiar with them, and could exploit that on my next run. If I didn’t gain resources from a run, I at least gained knowledge in my defeat. And to be absolutely clear, I’m not advocating for throwing supervisees into the meatgrinder so you can learn something. But in one’s efforts to try, to push boundaries where they can be pushed, falling short can (and should!) yield valuable information for the next time you and your team try.
Every person is different, and every team is different likewise. I’ve had the privilege of supervising six unique teams in my time as a direct supervisor, and each of them flowed and operated differently, both individually and as a group. I have used their strengths and weaknesses to complement one another, to help them grow and improve, and to do the best with our unique workplace situations. It is the same principle within Darkest Dungeon. There are different classes of adventurers (Hellions, Vestals, Crusaders, etc.), but even more than that are their quirks that make them one-of-a-kind. Some are more accurate when light is low, some are compulsively curious, some hit harder while protecting themselves less, and some have just stopped believing in their god. Like I mentioned earlier, finding the synergy between members and their abilities helped to find a rhythm in how we should tackle our current objective. The key, whether out of necessity or a preferred party makeup, is maximizing each individual team’s potential as it goes forth.
I was surprised that my usual playstyle (using high-level characters to pad lower-level ones and get them experience safely) wasn’t going to fly in Darkest Dungeon. At a certain point, characters would flat-out refuse to partake in easier quests, stating that “This is beneath me,” and lamenting that they won’t grow without challenge. And honestly, respect. I’ve worried about returning staff members in my line of work just growing tired and complacent with the same expectations being placed upon them year after year, even with a new community every year. So we give them training opportunities, both to help them grow and to teach others what has worked for them. We give them to tools they need to expand their strengths, to address their shortcomings, to grow. There is no advancement in stagnation, only in challenge.
Victory is sweet and long-sought in Darkest Dungeon. Even shorter skirmishes test the party’s abilities, while longer expeditions are tests in endurance as much as combat. Likewise, watching a team that you have helped to guide do something great is invigorating. In one of my runs, I accidentally unleashed an eldritch monster and immediately entered combat. I wasn’t prepared, but I believed in my adventurers and their capabilities so far, so we soldiered on. I used what I knew about them, helped them play off each other, and eventually (by the skin of our collective teeth) triumphed. In reality, I’ve fed into my supervisees’ passions, encouraged them to pursue it, and to do the things that make them happiest, all while supporting them behind the scenes if they needed it. So we ended up with a large-scale Connect 4 Tournament for our entire workplace, one of the most high-attended events of that caliber in our workplace’s history. And the victory was sweet for them, and for me as a result. Watching them succeed so thoroughly was its own reward.
On the other side, defeat, while progressively helpful in its own right, can hurt all the same. In-game, I retreated from an early battle after most of my party were suffering from overwhelming stress. I successfully retreated and watched, one after the other, as three of my four party members suffered stress-induced heart attacks and died on the spot. I thought we were prepared enough, but I was mistaken due to my own overconfidence. Likewise, in the opening throes of COVID-19, watching our supervisees struggle with the ever-changing rules and regulations of our workplace (and their responsibility to enforce it) resulted in so many of them maxing out their stress and taking on the “Burnt Out” condition within a month and a half. A great many of them left before the start of the next year, with ripples that we’re still feeling today, because we tried to make them do too much. Actions, and lack of planning and proper support, have consequences.
In a sense, I think one’s own (and my own) supervisory/management style can come out in my playing: do you invest in your people, or in your end-result? I’ve worked at places that invest in the end result, replacing people at-will as soon as they become a liability or less-than-optimal at their work. In Darkest Dungeon, your adventurers, your people, can be used as cannon fodder, of a “necessary loss” to ensure maximum loot. They can be just as easily replaced back at the Hamlet hub; there’s always a new batch of adventurers rolling in, so it’s not a huge mechanical loss.
On the flipside, I’ve worked with people who have gone above and beyond to invest in the people, challenging them to be their best self (at work and beyond) until there is no more growth to be had in their position. Likewise, there’s a sense of investment with some of the adventurers, having helped and guided them as Level 0 nobodies to Level 6 Champions. You’ve invested time, in-game currency, and sizable effort to their growth. Their continued work with you may outweigh the gold that can be attained by putting them in harm’s way. When loot is dangled in front of a waning party, which would mean more to you?
At a certain point, adventurers will reach the maximum level of 6, and there is no more room to grow. This is something of a natural end, the point in which one would loose these people onto the world to grow further, to continue to advance themselves. In Darkest Dungeon, the final test is not releasing them into the rest of society, but delving into the Level 6-designated Darkest Dungeon, a true test of their abilities and your ability to lead them. It is designed, like the rest of the game, to be difficult, and cruel, and punishing. You can still retreat, but at least one member of the party is required to stay behind to fend off anything that would follow. But there is nothing more you can do. You have trained these adventurers up as much as you can. It is time for them to show you what they are fully capable of, for better or for worse. And at a certain point, those you have supervised and helped grow will be left with no further opportunities to grow with and around you. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the nature of it. And they will leave, hopefully not to descend into an abominable dungeon, but to find new opportunities to grow and teach.
If there is one thing that I pulled from Darkest Dungeon, and all of its parallels to supervising and management, it is this: you need to watch your supervisees’ stress levels as much as you would anything. I haven’t had anyone devolve into pure abusive tendencies like the adventurers in Darkest Dungeon, but I’ve seen stress wrack and wreck my people all the same. I’ve seen people past a point of no return drag others down to their level. I’ve seen people who have risen above difficulty help to pull others up with them. Hopelessness is contagious, yes, but so is hope. Be the kind of leader who inspires the best in your people, who would galvanize them to willingly march into uncertainty with you, and because of you.
In terms of actual review: great gameplay loops, satisfying long-burn growth, challenging mechanics, understandable interface, beautiful aesthetic, haunting and gripping musical score, and the narration is top-notch. Play it, and find your best self in the depths!
All images courtesy of Darkest Dungeon’s official media page unless otherwise noted.
