Dark Lord

Our Dark Majesty

Open your eyes and search through your mind, our Dark Lord. As your power, supplies, subordinates, and all your belongings are gone.

Take back what is worthy of yours and rule these lands once more with your Ironfist.

The Game of The Play

Dark Lord is a free-to-play, roguelike RPG with lots of strategy, adventure, exploring, danger, and taunting wit. But remember to keep an eye over your back to avoid getting stabbed from behind by any of your advisors during the growth of your kingdom.

During this growth, throughout story chapters, you will need to make cautious decisions. Where each decision leads you more in a certain path's direction.

You need to stay within the center of these paths, as each path is each advisor. And the more Advisors you obtain, the more difficult it will be to maintain in the center of it all and not be dragged down any of the paths of your doom.

The player can choose from playing the Campaign (where this review will be written around) or Community Stories, where you have two DLCs from the game’s developers & one “Gift” obtained by creating an account on their website.

On the Community Stories, players can post their own stories with a number of chapters, even you. Where all of the player-posted ones are free to play.

The Campaign consists of twelve chapters of what it seems. (I've not finished the Campaign so I wouldn't know what happens after finishing all chapters. Maybe a new act begins? Who knows?)

Campaign

You will start the game with three advisors, each against the other. You can unlock up to fifteen Advisors, and depending on the chapter, you can select a certain number of Advisors to accompany you.

By selecting certain advisors, they will give you boosts with certain things, and you will improve their loyalty/points, which will cause the others to be against that person.

With a point difference below or above eight points from the rest of the Advisors, they will have a grudge against the one with more or less points, or the one against them.

The game acts out in chapters of a story, and as told earlier, you can select a few unlocked Advisors with you. During these chapters your actions will cause four bars to change, which you will need to keep in balance so they don’t overflow or drain.

The four bars are: Might – Magic – Fear – Wealth. Depending on your decisions, some bars will increase or decrease or even increase one but decrease another or the opposite of that. For example (Might vs. Magic), one of these increases while the other decreases.

And you must keep them all balanced, or you’ll fail.

Once the story chapter is completed, you will gain a certain amount of gold coins (and depending on your choices, Advisors points will increase) and return to your base camp, where you can interact with each Advisors building.

There you can enter dialogs with them to increase their points and learn deeper into the lore. Or you can spend gold on them and their faction to help their progress.

At the Base Camp you can find the Merchant and their shop. At the Merchant’s Shop you are able to purchase goods that can be used during stories to help keep everything balanced.

Visual & Audio Visuals

The game is visualized with this cartooned, shadowy look. Where shadows or corners of objects/structures add more black color over it, giving it this horror/scary look.

Everything looks drawn within the game and quite well, in fact.

The animations for each advisor's buildings at the Base Camp are all different and unique with their roles and kinds of structures. And as detailed as they are, while also being this detailed, drawn in a cartoonish form.

During chapters, the foreground is 2/3 of a barrel top, it looks like, where the dialog is displayed and the two option choices the player can take.

The way this is set, they have added small shadowed structures and objects on the side of the barrel. So, when you proceed with the story to another place or similar things happen, the barrel will turn, and the shadows will change into fitting the theme of the context of the story in its current stage.

Error found in Visuals

During chapters you get two options, and to select the specified option you either need to click on it or move the Advisor Card.

What I've noticed is that the Advisor Card gets a bit glitchy when moving it above a certain height on the screen.

The height differences from time to time, but it always glitches near the top of the screen

Audio

Music

While playing, you’ll hear the beautiful sound of a harp and violins playing this magically filled instrumental song. It truly sounds magical and beautiful, setting the mood for the game’s theme incredibly perfectly.

The song changes into a more mysterious and cautious mood during chapters or during dialogs at certain events.

Sounds

Each building at the base camp has its own different small sound play when interacting/looking inside any of the buildings. While during chapters, after an option is chosen, the advisor card burns up in flames with the most satisfying sound, as it would easily and quickly burn through paper.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Drawing Style & Animations
Story Content
Music & Sounds
Lore Details
Free to Play

Cons

Small glitch error

My Final Little Thoughts

For a free-to-play game, it looks incredible - the play length for one whole story (aka the main campaign), the detailed lore and options given, and the music and audio.

This game got quite the amount of highly positive reviews, and it sure has earned them. It’s an enjoyable free-to-play game where you, as the dark lord, lose your memory in the huge explosion of your castle.

And you need to rely on your “trusty” three advisors who survived and stayed by your side. Choose your move from two options that can change the status of your resources.

Like the rest of all reviews for this game, it is highly recommended to try out.

Rating: 9.5/10

Are Ya Winning Son?