Summary
Fantasy worlds may have started as escapism, but quickly, they’ve become a way for RPGs to explore some truly dark territory. These days, the term"grimdark"is used to describe unrelentingly brutal fantasy worlds. While the term originated to describe theWarhammersetting, it now applies to many brilliant RPGs.
Whether it’s Lovecraftian hellscapes or scathing criticisms of the effects of organised religion, there are plenty ofbrilliant grimdark RPGsfor fans to play. This list is ranked both by how well the game evokes the grimdark genre, and the quality of the game in general.
As the 2010s reached their second half, the indie boom of the early decade was in full swing, with many indies directly competing with AAA games for the spotlight, withDarkest Dungeonbeing a notable example.
This roguelike grimdark dungeon-crawler RPGfollows a party of adventurerstrying to reach the eponymous darkest dungeon to discover great treasure and the evil that lurks within. With careful attention to sanity mechanics and brutal difficulty in an even more brutal world,Darkest Dungeonis unrelenting in its grim atmosphere, which makes persevering all the more satisfying.
7Warhammer: Vermintide 2
Those Damn Rats
While there are a lot of greatWarhammergames that could have made this list, none are quite as viscerally fun and evocative of the grimdark asVermintide 2,theLeft 4 Dead-style co-operative shooter that makesWarhammer’sgrimdark world tangible, gritty, and a lot of fun to play through.
In the game, parties of players are tasked with making their way through a menagerie of cursed domains plagued with Scaven—a race of humanoid rodents—piling up massive body counts in the process. It’s unrelentingly violent, brutal, and perfectly evokes the grimdark aesthetic.
By the end of the 2010s, the ascendancy of the FromSoftware formula was reaching its peak. While many games that tried to adopt the Soulslike formula often failed to stand out from the crowd,Blasphemoushad no such issues.
The main reasonBlasphemousstands out is its stunningly dark world inspired by Catholic symbology and mythology, where angels, religion, and Gods are mangled together in a nightmarish stew of violence and hatred. It’s a strikingly memorable setting that stands shoulder to shoulder with any of FromSoftware’s settings in terms of uniqueness.
For a long time, it felt like, in the world of top-down action-RPG isometric looters, few games could stand a chance against the behemothDiablofranchise. However, in 2013,Path of Exilebravely took on the task and built a massive fanbase in the process, becoming a firm favorite to this day.
Path of Exileisn’t only knownfor its massive skill trees and in-depth customization, but also for its unrelentingly dark fantasy world full of blood, guts, and gore. Very few nice things happen inPath of Exile, which is all part of the monster-slaying charm.
Almost every FromSoftware game begins after a world has already ended, or is in sharp decline. This has rarely been clearer than inBloodborne, where the player awakens in the city of Yharnam, a grand testament to human ingenuity, now fallen, rife withhorrific bossesand blood-addled madmen.
Not only is the world ofBloodbornerelentlessly depressing, but there truly is no hope for the city of Yarnham. Even if the monsters are set aside, the player soon discovers that the city is in the grasp of scheming Lovecraftian entities who consider humanity little more than ants. There’s no hope inBloodborne, only perseverance.
Though theWarhammeruniverse birthed the term “grimdark,” in the modern gaming industry, few games embody the grimdark aesthetic nearly as much asThe Witcher 3. This game stands out from the crowd by bringing the grim, realistic, and morally ambiguous world of the source books to a much wider audience.
In the game, Geralt, a monster hunter, is constantly confronted by the sheer banality of evil around every corner, where men are just as cruel and savage as monsters, and there’s rarely a straightforward morally good choice.Almost every sidequestdetails some grim aspect of humanity’s shriveled moral core. It’s a world defined by its misery and persevering in spite of it.
Frankly, it’s hard to imagine what modern dark fantasy worlds would look like without the influence of theDiablogames, specificallyDiablo 2, which popularized the vision of a dying fantasy world plagued by angels and demons as an ideal setting for ultra-violent fantasy action and grim storytelling.
Diablo 2set the template for all theDiablogames that came after with strong writing and stories where innocents are frequently slaughtered by power-mad demons and fiends, subject to the whims of an uncaring cosmology. Strength is the only way to survive in the brutal, grimdark world of Sanctuary.
All FromSoftware worlds could qualify as grimdark, but few are as existentially depressed about the state of existence likeDark Souls 3. The finale of theDark Soulstrilogy, the game tells the story of a world on its knees, barely struggling on, where everything is exhausted, dying, and unable to continue.Almost all the bossesare desperate, hungry, and just trying to cling to the only world they know.
Many have read the game as a metatextual indictment on games that return to the same franchise time and time again, considering how the continual cycle of relinking the flame has ruined the world ofDark Soulsto the point where it can barely hold together. It’s a game defined by a slow apocalypse of death and destruction, making it one of the best grimdark RPGs ever made.
