Darkest Dungeon 2's free strategy game Kingdoms update is coming in three parts, with the first due in 2024

Also, look forward to some paid DLC about night-soil

Darkest Dungeon 2's Kingdoms mode - a free turn-based boardgame reimagining of the hellish roguelike roadtrip RPG - will release in three modules, Red Hook have announced. The first of this fearful trio, Hunger Of The Beast Clan, is down to launch in Q4 2024, which translates to sometime during the period 1st October to 31st December.

It'll accompany a new paid Darkest Dungeon 2 DLC, Inhuman Bondage, which introduces a new region, a new hero with "...unique" mechanics and a fresh faction of seemingly excrement-themed fiends to slaughter.

In case you missed it, I spoke to Red Hook about the Kingdoms update at GDC this year. It's both a "remix album" of ideas from each Darkest Dungeon game and a top-down strategy spin-off where you shuffle wagonloads of heroes around a node-based map, defending taverns against waves of eldritch creatures. In addition to training and equipping your heroes and keeping them sane, you'll need to complete a quest chain to track down a boss. Battles are much as in the main Darkest Dungeon 2 campaign, but hero recruitment and progression harken back to the first game's town-dungeon loop.

From the looks of things, each Kingdom module will introduce a new enemy faction. As you'd expect, Hunger Of The Beast Clan features the Beastmen, a marauding mass of pugnacious piggies. Back at GDC, Red Hook told me that the other two factions are the Coven (witches) and the Crimson Courtiers (perma-debuff-inflicting insect vampires). No clue what order they'll arrive in.

As for the Inhuman Bondage DLC, the Steam announcement post tantalises with the prospect of "ancient sepulchers oozing with the gelatinous night-soil of a thousand corpses". Liquid cadaver poop, how fun! The new area is the Catacombs, which is said to be equivalent in size to the existing Sluice, an unmappable and thus, unpredictable optional region. I wonder if it'll be similarly confusing. It sure sounds like it's going to be smelly. Thank god "digital scent technology" never went mainstream, eh.

I'm also pretty curious about this new hero. Darkest Dungeon's heroes aren't exactly known for playing fantasy RPG classes straight, so if they're explicitly branding this one "...unique", it must be a warped creation indeed. Look at those full stops, oozing with suspense. Could the new hero be composed of gelatinous night-soil? Yeah, let's dwell on that image.