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All this combines to create a thrilling rollercoaster of tension buy Dark And Darker Gold, where a single xeno wandering into a room can spiral into an intense, protracted battle that could leave your marines terrified, maimed, abducted, or plain old dead. And all of this is before you think about completing your objectives, which are often as multilayered and uncompromising as your battles with the xenomorphs.
In Dead Hills, for example, you’ll need to locate the command centre, and use it to locate a half-dozen missing colonists, escorting each one from wherever they’re hiding to your ARC. It’s vast, relentless, and exhausting, to the point where you probably won’t finish it in one sitting. Indeed, a key element of Dark Descent is knowing when to pull the plug on a mission, and retreat to the Otago to lick your wounds and send back a fresh squad the next day.
When you return to the Otago, Dark Descent becomes more of an XCOM clone, using a basic facsimile of that game’s strategy layer to manage your marines. Here you can treat their wounds (both physical and mental), promote them to unlock new skills, furnish them with better weapons unlocked with resources gathered during missions, and research new technologies using xenomorph samples.
It’s light compared to XCOM’s strategy layer, and much more derivative than the way missions play out. But it serves an important purpose. Most crucially, each passing day increases the infestation level of Lethe buying Dark And Darker Gold, so every time you give your marines a break from a mission, you risk it becoming more dangerous when they return.