October 18, 2022

Darkest Afk Review 2022: Is it a good game?

Spread the love

Darkest Afk is an idle Rpg game inspired by the famous roguelike Rpg game Darkest Dungeon. Although they share similar art style the game is different from the original game. Let’s find out more about this mobile game.

Story

Strangely the game did not have any intro which kinda ruin the expectation of the Darkest dungeon vibes. Sadly you will know part of the story through a mediocre dialogues between characters. So basically you don’t know who you are and why are you going to fight. All these question will remain answered.

How is the Game play of Darkest Afk?

Darkest Afk will start in the middle of a conversation between heroes. Then you will engage a battle between your heroes and a demon boss. It’s the the type of fight where they give high level character fighting against some last boss of the game. Just to show you what kind of ability your heroes have and of course to show a bit about the game itself. So after your crushing defeat where you were not able to kill the boss and got separated from your allies, stripped from all your levels, gear and power. You will start with a level 1 character with nothing as the second part of the tutorial.

The tutorial will show you the basics about leveling, gearing, using abilities, fighting monsters and collecting idle rewards from your Mimic. Once you have progress enough in the story and have obtained your 3 heroes. In the castle, you will have access to buildings where you can summon heroes and spells. Access to shops, dungeons, labyrinth and tower. As usual here’s a short description of important buildings;

Market – Four shop where you can buy a variety of items with different type of currency
World Split – Spell summoning
Recruitment Point – Hero summoning
Forge – Refine your gear
Magic Tower – Upgrade your spells
Tavern – Obtain or remove traits
Temple – Merge, Reset and Purify(Dismiss) your heroes
Mines of Abyss – Send your heroes to explore to obtain various type of currency
Tower of Darkness – Climb the tower while fighting on each floor for better rewards
Arena of Doom – PVP fights
Utopia of Dragons – Deal as much damage to obtain better rewards against a dragon
Labyrinth of Madness – The closest things that can be associated with Darkest Dungeon as the game play is nearly similar with a torch system, traps, buffs, camps, different path and death of heroes but only in this mode. You won’t lose your hero and you can always reset the labyrinth if things goes bad. If you manage to clear all 3 Tier, you will be rewarded with a specific currency and other goodies.

Combat

In Darkest Afk, you can put only 3 heroes in your roaster to fight. Choose 3 heroes of each class namely Support, Tank and DPS. Position the Tank in only front position and give your support and DPS the 2 back row position. Once preparation are done, you can start combat, the fight will look much like a brawl where enemies and heroes will hit each other in real time. After reaching enough energy they can use their skills either automatically or by you activating the skills for them.

Basically you go stage by stage to defeat enemies, note that each 5 stage will have a boss at the last wave. Do the same till you complete the chapter and repeat the same process again in the other chapter. Combat is really simple in this game, combat remain similar in other game mode, only the enemies will change. You may obtain positive Traits(Buffs) while on winning streak and also obtain negative ones if your on a losing streak.

Gear and Heroes

As already mentioned, you will have 3 specific class of heroes with different role. Those heroes can be level up and upgraded to higher rarity if you have enough copies of them. Leveling will be capped on a certain level that’s why you will need to upgrade the heroes to a higher quality in order to continue leveling. You will have only 4 piece of gear for each type of heroes, they can be refined to a certain amount of star depending the rarity. In order to refine your gear you will need to sacrifice other unused gear and some gold.

What kind of Graphic does Darkest Afk have?

If you are here because of the similar art style of Darkest Dungeon, you will definitely love Darkest Afk graphic. A dark gothic fantasy in 2D, unique to genre of Darkest Dungeon. Animation wise, it look a bit janky, the movement seems a bit odd.

The character seems to move like controlled puppets attached to strings. Heroes does look very different from each other, plus the fact that you have different race such as human, elves, dwarf, troll, vampire, demons, goblins and the list go on. Skill has simple animation with just a glow or something appearing out of nowhere.

How is the Controls of Darkest Afk?

You can just mange your equipment and heroes, change their position before combat and use their ultimate during combat if you are not using auto. You can also use spells from time to time but it can also be set in auto. The only thing left is for you to collect the idle rewards from your mimic.

Sound & Music

Darkest Afk has only 3 background music which goes on endless loop and is mostly annoying the more you play the game. The sound effect is one of the weirdest sound i’ve heard, the heroes growl and grunt when using their skills.

How is the Game Length of Darkest Afk?

As any idle game, Darkest Afk does not ask much of your time. It takes less than 10 min to complete your daily quests. However you need to come and collect your rewards every 8 hours which i feel a bit forcing my hand just to connect to the game for that. Progression is slow and will become slower the more you advance. The amount of reward collected on a day gives only enough resources to upgrade 1 heroes to 3 to 5 levels only. Remember your team is compose of 3 heroes, so i will the math to you for you to have an understanding of how slow things are.

Is Darkest Afk Free to play?

Yes, Darkest Afk is totally F2P, no paywall or content locked behind VIP. For the VIP, you can obtain free VIP points by progressing through the game for free as you progress. Of course progression will be going to be slow but the game gives you enough gems daily for you to summon enough to be able to progress with a bit of RNG and patience.

Is Darkest Afk Pay to win?

No, Darkest Afk is not P2W. Even that game does have some P2W element like VIP but they only gives you a slight boost. At a certain point you will reach a wall where only patience will help accumulate enough resources to upgrade to go further. Also don’t forget that summoning heroes is random, so it does not guaranty you to obtain the hero you wanted no matter how many gems you will spend.

No ads beside it’s own advertisement of some package that may pop up from time to time.

Microtransaction

The Darkest Afk shop is rather very simple. You will have the weekly and monthly subscription cards, the gems packages, completion rewards and of course the VIP packages. Price vary between $0.99 to $99.99, as usual be responsible when spending.

What is the Life span of Darkest Afk?

In all honesty, i don’t believe much that any idle game can last long enough and Darkest Afk is one of it. The game sadly does not have any element that may keep a player interested to play or spend money. No waifu collection, no thrill in the game play, no fun events, overall the game feels dull and boring. If the game were to have some element of rogue like Darkest Dungeon then the game may pick interest of players. Other than that, i would say good luck to the team to keep the game alive so far.

Benefits

Darkest Afk comes with a small management as an RPG with little amount of heroes, gear and resources to manage. Making it one of the easiest idle game with simple management system for beginners. It’s always good for beginners to start game like this as it’s not complicated or complex to understand. Beside it’s a good side game that you can play from time to time.

Community

Facebook

Instagram

Discord

Suggestions

Increase the reward of idle time
Lower the cost of upgrading heroes
Add different formation for combat
Increase the idle time cap to 12h instead of 8h
Add unique item for each class
Enhance the skill animation
Let you see which Debuff and Buff in battle
Make labyrinth more like Darkest Dungeon
Additional effect when raising the grade of heroes instead of having only a frame color change
Change the weird sound effect
Add a pity system on the summon
Choose specific banner that rotate every month

Updates

Bug fixes only i guess.

Should you play?

Yes, Darkest Afk is a nice little idle game with very simple mechanics. The game have similar art style of Darkest Dungeon but it is not the same kind of game. Progression is a bit too slow even for an idle game, things does get boring once you reach a certain chapter in the game. So far it have the weirdest sound effect i have heard in the mobile games. Overall if your going to play this game, you should consider playing an entirely new game and forget about it being the Darkest Dungeon on mobile. If you do so, you will find a nice little idle game. In the other hand any association beside the art style of Darkest Dungeon, will only bring a big disappointment to it’s fan.Thank you for reading till the end, i will see you in another review.