When The Road Darkens Is the Brutal Early Access Nightmare You’ll Either Love or Hate Forever
Hello everyone. Today we’re going to talk about When The Road Darkens, a game whose very title sounds like the opening narration to a bad mid-2000s fantasy movie made on an indie budget. It’s a cooperative boss-rush action game in Early Access, which means it’s currently a mixture of “core gameplay that works” and “everything else the dev promises will magically appear over 12 to 14 months-assuming, of course, that they don’t lose motivation halfway through and decide to stream Stardew Valley instead.”
The Premise – Team Up or Fall Apart
You and up to three friends get hurled into themed arenas against “raid-style” bosses. This means you get telegraphed attacks you’re somehow still going to fail to dodge, coordination requirements that are ignored because Dave is busy looting gear instead of healing you, and the classic loop of “fight, wipe, argue, repeat.” The dev calls this “solo-friendly.” Sure. And Dark Souls is “relaxing.”
The formula is straightforward: survive big flashy moves, grab upgrades, buff yourself or the team, and inevitably “accidentally” murder your friends during chaotic fights. You die, you learn, you try again-like an arcade game from the ‘90s, except instead of spending a fistful of quarters, you’re spending your free time questioning your choice of friends.
Early Access – Optimism or Delusion?
The developer is a solo act-admirable, ambitious, and vaguely alarming. Early Access, they say, is meant to involve the community, fine-tune balance, and respond to feedback. Which is code for “you’re essentially alpha testing this thing for me, but you have to pay for the privilege.” There’s a projected 12 to 14 months of development to reach “full vision.” That’s the kind of vague optimism that makes me check my pulse like a concerned doctor because I’ve seen too many of these roadmaps turn into roadkill.
On the bright side, there’s already a somewhat beefy footing: 17 bosses across 4 acts, 7 trash mobs for variety, a mix of 8+ abilities with upgrade trees, three characters, multiple camera perspectives, co-op up to four players, and difficulty modes to ensure you can be equally humiliated at any skill level. Fully playable now, they say-and that part isn’t pure marketing fluff. If they can keep building, this could mature into something better than “another co-op arena fighter that dies four months post-launch.”
What’s Promised for 1.0
- More bosses with unique mechanics.
- Additional acts and environments.
- Extra characters, abilities, upgrades, and gear.
- Possible “new features” (translation: ideas not locked in yet).
None of this is revolutionary-it’s standard expansion of content breadth. But the danger, as with many Early Access projects, is biting off more than the solo dev can chew without summoning the terrifying specter of feature creep. I’ve seen MMO dev teams trip over that pitfall, let alone one person.
The Doctor’s Diagnosis
Examining this as a doctor of games-not in the sense of handing out meds, though the temptation is there-I’d say the patient is stable but in need of intensive care. The gameplay loop is healthy, the skeleton is strong, but the flesh isn’t all there yet. In gaming terms: the meta is decent, but the content pool is still too shallow for long-term immersion. That’s survivable-if the dev keeps their foot on the pedal.
Think of it like loading into a raid in WoW, but half the bosses are concept art and your healer is still being patched in next month. It forces that awkward mental calculus: do you invest time now, or stash it in your wish list bunker like you’re hoarding gold in a Fallout shelter until civilization rebuilds?
Verdict – Wary Curiosity
There’s a competent, potentially fun game here. In Early Access, that’s rarer than a balanced competitive shooter. The combat structure, upgrade choices, and co-op chaos work as advertised. The real question is whether this solo developer can turn promises into pixels before the player base evaporates. I’m predicting either a satisfying mid-tier darling or another lost relic of the Steam graveyard.
For now, it’s cautiously interesting-but “cautious” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.
Article source: When The Road Darkens
