Happy New Year Backers!

The Red Hook team has been working incredibly hard, and Early Access is just around the corner: 

• Early Access Backers (Wanderer Tier+) will Get Steam Keys Friday Jan 30th
• The public can purchase Early Access on Steam starting Feb. 3rd

In the next backer update, we will be providing full details on this Backer Weekend and what you can expect, including details on how your Steam key will be delivered (Humble Store). At this point we can only guarantee the PC version will be available right off the bat, but we are working hard to make Mac available at the same time and will confirm either way as we get closer.

But *this* backer update is about a really cool launch event we have planned. It's the...

As many of you know, Twitch partners and YouTube channel hosts are a hugely important resource for indies, and we want to entice them to broadcast their exploits and stress-induced failures in Darkest Dungeon. The more people see the game, the better our launch will go and this translates directly into us being able to cram even more cool stuff in the game!

WHEN: Friday Jan 30th to Friday Feb 6th 11:59 PM PST  

WHAT: Darkest Dungeon is a game about stress, flawed heroes, tragic ends and unlikely triumphs. We're inviting streamers and content creators to preview the game and show it to their subs. During the event days, Content Creators may submit entries for BEST VIDEO in two categories:

1) MOST EXCITING ADVENTURE: Did a party disintegrate into infighting, chaos, and death? Did a lone survivor make it out against the odds? Perhaps an unlikely hero saved the day when all was lost? Show us a good story. Triumph or tragedy, we're cool either way. 

2) VIEWER’S CHOICE: This will showcase a Streamer's skills as a host - they can submit a Darkest Dungeon-related video that is informative, entertaining, or both!

THE BEST PART FOR BACKERS:  We'll shortlist our favorites, but it will be YOU who chooses the winning videos in a backer poll of epic proportions!  That's right, BACKERS will decide which Content Creators win prizes and live forever in our Hall of Fame!

You can get involved by contacting your favorite Streamer and/or Channel Host and telling them to join in. Full details are here: http://www.darkestdungeon.com/torment/

DARKEST DUNGEON ON STEAM!

We have an official Steam page! Tell your friends that missed the Kickstarter to go there and add Darkest Dungeon to their Steam wishlists!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/

QUICK POLL: What catches yer eye?

Want to do us a solid? Take a look at these five images and tell us which one you like the best:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LP9CVK3 

EXCLUSIVE WALLPAPER

Last but CERTAINLY not least, we leave you with a teaser image from the cinematic game intro. Fancy a ride with this driver? (CLICK the image to access the full HD wallpaper for download.)

Almost to Early Access! We'll have full details of Backer Weekend soon.

Thank you for all your support, backers. You have made this game happen.

--The Darkest Dungeon Team

Official Website and Community: 

http://www.darkestdungeon.com

http://www.darkestdungeon.com/forums/

Steam Page and Community: 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/

http://steamcommunity.com/app/262060/discussions/

/r/DarkestDungeon 

http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkestDungeon

Official Twitter: 

https://www.twitter.com/DarkestDungeon

Official Facebook Page: 

http://www.facebook.com/DarkestDungeon

We have a TON of exciting news to cover in this update, so let's dive right in!

Early Access Steam Launch and Backer Access Dates!

We are happy to announce that Early Access launch (Steam only!) is planned for Tuesday February 3rd, 2015! That's less than two months away!

Backer Early Weekend: EVEN BETTER, we are planning on giving all Early Access backers access starting on the preceding weekend! (We are aiming to send keys out no later than Friday January 30th but will confirm exact time and day as we get closer.)

Other Backer Rewards Will Come Later: Early Access is just one step towards our final release which will come in mid to late 2015. Your other backer rewards (depending on your pledge level) such as personalized heroes, personalized items, art books, soundtracks, and so on will all come later.

You haven't missed anything and we haven't forgotten about those things! First step is getting the game in great shape, and then we'll shift focus to get some of those things taken care of. We are excited about rolling out the personalized heroes and trinkets, especially! 

What will Early Access Feature? We are incredibly excited about the Early Access program. Our strategy has always been to make sure that what we deliver as an Early Access game is super fun and doesn't feel like a "half-made" game.  Although we will be adding tons of new features and content throughout Early Access, what we launch will still deliver many hours of gameplay.  As we get closer, we'll confirm exactly what's in the build.

Darkest Dungeon Confirmed for PlayStation (PS4, Vita)

Yesterday, as part of the PlayStation Experience in Las Vegas, Darkest Dungeon had some screen time during the keynote! We announced that the game is coming to PS4 and Vita in 2015! We're excited to expand the reach to consoles and handheld gamers.

You can check out the teaser trailer here, and catch a glimpse of the first Warrens boss towards the end!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D48aUaPZHY

Will I Get a PlayStation Key as part of my pledge? We don't have a firm answer for you yet. We are not free to distribute PlayStation keys in the same way that we can give out Steam keys, so this makes it somewhat unlikely. Also, at the time of the Kickstarter, there was no PlayStaiton version announced, so we priced and set up the tiers based only on PC/Mac/Linux.  But we have a few more conversations to have with the storefronts before we can answer with 100% certainty.

Development Update!

We've been like a well-oiled machine this past couple months, cranking away on new stuff! We also added some temporary help in the way of extra programming and design horsepower, to help stay on schedule. This has also helped us do some things before Early Access that we previously thought we'd do later. All together, we have a great team working their butts off! We really enjoy making Darkest Dungeon, and are grateful to all of you for making it possible.

Here's a sampling of awesome stuff we've touched in the past two months:

• New drag and drop interface for town, hero roster, inventory
  
• Tons of new interactive objects ('curios') in the dungeons
  
• Warrens monsters and warrens boss fully playable
  
• Over 100 equippable items ('trinkets') to augment heroes
  
• More Affliction act out behaviors
  
• More voice-over narration by the one and only Wayne June in work
• TONS of new combat effects and art
• Town graphics and user interface
• Plus much more!

Merchant Class Poll Results

The results are in from the previous Backer Poll, which was about what visual theme the Merchant class hero should be. The "Silk Road" concept won the day. "A wealthy aristocrat and antiquarian with a keen eye for the ancient and the valuable. "

When we begin designing the Merchant class, she will fit this concept. Thank you for your feedback!  It is awesome to have almost 5,000 responses! We'll do more of these polls in the future.

 Backer-Exclusive Rough Concept Art Pack

We thought it would be fun to share some rough/in-development artwork with you all - click here to download the exclusive BackerPack! (Zip, 3MB).  This shows a sampling of Chris' work as he builds up to final art. A little "behind the scenes" for you!

That will about do it!  Don't forget to stop by the forums at www.darkestdungeon.com, or you can catch us on Twitter and Facebook.  

Happy Holidays! 

--The Darkest Dungeon Team

Where are we at?

Meeting all the gamers and press at the show was exhilarating - we got a huge amount of positive feedback from everyone who played the build!  We've put two different runs of our PAX build up on Youtube for everyone to check out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-93DwbVSmA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCNMdv_9Gro

With PAX behind us now, we are able to once again shift to a development focus.  Our priority is on creating a meaningful progression as you attempt to rebuild your Estate lands.  That is, medium term goals that keep you engaged and provide interesting rewards as you work towards building a party tough enough to endure the Darkest Dungeon.  And, as always, we're flooding the game with more monsters, items, animations, quirks and environment art!

PAX Plague Roundup

At PAX Prime, we gave out Plague Doctor masks, and encouraged people to take pictures of themselves and their friends.  Our top 5 picks would win free Steam keys, and first place would get an artbook as well!  Check out the winners:

First Place: 

https://twitter.com/killerspore/status/505468102696378368/photo/1 

Other Winners: 

https://twitter.com/Antiloquist95/status/512761264305491968/photo/1 

http://instagram-online.com/view/photos/800482597705555735_242611990.jpg#.VCB2GPldVyU 

http://instagram-online.com/view/photos/798118622539567891_11516555.jpg#.VCB2CPldVyU 

https://twitter.com/nickthepezant/status/506167143831175168/photo/1

If you are one of the winners, we'll be in touch soon!

Early Access: Doing it Right 

We know there's been increasing interest around our Early Access release date, and we wanted to give you backers a heads up regarding our plans. The most important thing to us is validating your support and enthusiasm for the project by launching with a great game. We know that Early Access has a mixed reputation, so we want to do it right. 

Early Access should be a fun experience for those involved. Regular content and feature drops make the process exciting and allow us to collect valuable feedback as we drive toward our 1.0 release. Our vision for Darkest Dungeon's Early Access is a high quality (re)playable experience. There will certainly be bugs, balance hiccups, and some areas of the game will be less polished than others...but we want our core loop to really shine. 

Early Access scope will be announced closer to the launch window. This will give you guys a clear look at what to expect from a feature and content standpoint when the first build goes live. Also just prior to launch, we will release an Early Access roadmap. This will provide a high level look at when new content and features will be added to the game. 

New heroes, environments, trinkets, and enemies will all be streaming into the build regularly, meaning there will always be a reason to grab the latest update and take it for a spin. 

You can expect Early Access to hit Steam around mid-Feb of 2015. 

It might move a couple weeks in either direction depending on release calendars of other games (e.g. we don't want to launch the same day as Bloodborne), but it won't change too much. We are on the home stretch!

No "Early" Early Access is Planned At this point.  

We are not planning on an "extra-early" Early Access for backers only. We may do some very restricted closed alpha testing (for machine compatibility bugs), in which case we will make an announcement regarding any opportunities to join that closed test. However, in general you should expect to gain access to the Early Access when we deploy that publicly on Steam. 

Full Release Timeframe  

Throughout Early Access, we will be adding new features and content to get the game to full "final" release. We are confident that full release will take place during Summer 2015. We know that this is a bit later than some of you are expecting, but just like with Early Access, we would rather deliver something that meets our own internal standards rather than rush out something that isn't ready. Rest assured that we are working hard to move that timeframe up as much as possible without sacrificing the quality of the game! A successful Early Access is the first step.

Pre-Orders are Ending Oct 1st

Also a heads up: we'll be taking the remaining preorder packages off of darkestdungeon.com on Oct 1st.  People will still be able to purchase early access when the game goes live, but the bundled Deluxe and Ultimate packs will no longer be available.  So tell those fence-sitting friends to come down of that lofty perch!

If you're reading this after Oct 1st and you haven't backed the game, don't worry--you can still get it as soon as it launches on Steam!

Forums/Fansite 

Sneakypie, Cadogan & co. have been doing an exceptional job running www.darkerdungeon.com. The site has everything: press coverage links, archived twitch streams, FAQs, and forums! Go check it out, and make a post while you're at it! It's a great and growing community of fans like yourselves.

Shouts Outs 

Dark, unsettling and enjoying a great deal of Kickstarter love - Pathologic!  Let's hear it for Plague Doctors!  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic

Check out the impressive scope and charming nostalgia of Blossom Tales! That little knight is too adorable...  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1441844041/blossom-tales-the-sleeping-king 

Battle Brothers is a tactical fantasy game that evokes the feeling of some great games from ages past. This one needs some Steam Greenlight love! Check it out and give a thumbs up if you like it! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=311186565

Full Speed Ahead

We have a lot of work to do over the next few months. But we love what we're doing, and really think you will, too. Thanks, as always, for supporting us and giving us the ability to create this game!

--The Darkest Dungeon Team

Hi everyone!

We just sent out a newsletter update, in which we talk about Darkest Dungeon at PAX, the latest developments on the game (including new screenshots!), and more.

Going to keep this short, because you can read all the details here:

News from the Darkest Dungeon - August 2014 - http://eepurl.com/WqeEX

If for some reason you aren't on the newsletter mailing list, we encourage you to join here.  However, as a backer, we'll always keep you updated via Kickstarter, too. The mailing list is purely optional for you.

Oh--here's one of those new screenshots to whet your appetite!

--The Darkest Dungeon Team