Pascale

Description

“Pascale” (pass-KAL) is a five-chapter novella inspired by my first playthrough of Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon (2016). For those unfamiliar with this dark gem of a dungeon crawler, Red Hook Studios took the typical dangers of RPG adventuring and added to it a unique twist, focusing on the psychological toll of slashing monsters and exploring blindly for fame and fortune.

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There’s a lot to love about Darkest Dungeon. I love the grim, oppressive feel to the game, an atmosphere both amplified by relentless pulses of Lovecraftian horror and playfully undercut by spots of well-timed humor. I love how simple it is, and how hard and unfair that makes it. It’s a truly fun, terrifying game to get lost in, and I highly recommend checking it out.

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One of my many goals for Second Skye includes bringing to light some of the great stories and storytelling taking place within the video game industry. Darkest Dungeon highlights a particularly unique aspect of video game storytelling, where the gamemaker/storyteller provides a narrative framework with enough space for the player to fill in some stories of their own (a phenomenon I like to call “epi-narrative digestion,” though it is more commonly referred to on the whole as “emergent narrative”).

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This novella loosely mirrors my first encounter with Darkest Dungeon’s "affliction system," largely through the eyes of Pascale, who quickly became my favorite in-game hero. In other words, the following is based on a true story. Well, a true video game story. I hope you enjoy your trip down the Old Road!