December is chock-full of holidays, and regardless of their individual religious connections, there’s a very good reason for that: the winter solstice. During the darkest time of the year, when the days–let alone the nights–are freezing, and light seems to be fading from the world, people needed an excuse to be happy. Even before 2020. Today’s word isn’t the happiest, but it does fit, thematically.
fuliginous, adj. – sooty, smoky, dirty
Learned from: Darkest Dungeon (PC, Mac, mobile, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Switch, XBox One)
Developed by Red Hook Studios
Published by Red Hook Studios (2016)
I have a certain fondness for games that are punishingly difficult: Dark Souls and its ilk, the Shin Megami Tensei series, etc. Darkest Dungeon is no exception. Your characters are as likely to go insane from the stress of exploring your family’s estate, as they are to die of actual physical damage. Pathological fears, obsessive compulsions, and strange fixations can cripple them more than any injury or disease. And sometimes when one of them succumbs to this stress, they have some colorful, almost H.P. Lovecraft-level purple prose to accompany it–such as the occultist who cried out about the pull of the “fuliginous abyss” calling to him, or something like that, before he lunged for the clearly evil altar in the middle of the room.
So yeah, your characters will occasionally do things that are outside your control, and those things can sometimes lead to the death of your entire party, like when they activate a ritual to open a rift in time and space, and some tentacled horror picks them apart, one by one. As long as you don’t mind setbacks like that, it’s an incredible game.
Brain Rot 