A Bare Bones Look at a Possible Great in the Making
I was pretty shocked to see that Darkhaven was coming out with a playable demo for Steam's NextFest '26 only weeks after hearing about the game for the first time. A new studio, packed with talent that had hands in the creation of some of the greatest ARPG's ever made... will they succeed? While that remains to be seen, let's have a look into this pre-alpha demo and see what shines and what doesn't.
I put in about 3.5 hours to the Darkhaven demo, which was enough to more or less see it through and beat the big bad, then explore some of the seemingly endless dungeon after the quest is done. When I said we get a bare bone look I really mean it! This demo is VERY early development and while it does have a couple of skill tree skills to unlock and some great weapon drops, that's about it. There's not a lot in the way of polish when it comes to moves, powers, graphics, movement mechanics, etc.; and while the community around it seem highly divided on the game being great or a waste of time, I'm happy to just roll with what it is - a pre-alpha.
What To Look Forward To
Darkhaven has a pretty good harness on that old familiar Diablo'esque feeling but also simplifies things a bit with less abilities and combos (at this stage at least) which feels a bit more PoE2 style at the start - definitely a good direction.
The procedurally generated maps seem to work quite well, and unlike some ARPG's you don't have to grind too hard in order to not only find loot but find GOOD loot that's worth taking a little time to review and consider if it's going to benefit your build or not.
The attacks are quite nice and feel good when hitting mobs of enemies, and the movement (especially the double-jump) feel nice and are super handy when trying to stay alive and avoid getting hit or overrun.
While still being fairly basic right now, the footprints to greatness are definitely laid down even in the demo. The variation and abundance of loot that you don't really use in the demo plus multiple build mechanics like the Skills, Tattoos, and Puzzle Box (which I didn't use at all in the demo) show promise of a character build system that matches some of the best.
What's Not So Great Currently
I don't want to be too harsh on any particular element given this is a pre-alpha demo and one can hardly expect any fine polish whatsoever, but the destructible terrain just seems unnecessary and overly janky. Not only did I find it far too easy to get stuck in incredibly annoying divots, but even when fighting enemies (and bosses! :/) I found my attacks hitting the terrain instead of my target. This exacerbates the issue as it creates more random edges and deeper holes, and being isometric, judging depth seems to be even harder for the game logic than it is for the human player.
Also working through underground dungeons with many rooms generated in places only reachable to tunnelling through walls only to have them full of barrels and crates with no loot... there's just took many, too often, too silly.
Poor land mass crumbling aside, anything else I feel critical of I would largely put down to "it's a pre-alpha" and assume it will be polished and refined many times over before the game is actually released. Just the fine grain detail of shaders and shadows, textures and glows. The game looks more basic that one would expect because it's nowhere near a finished product, but the build blocks are all there and it's well past an MVP stage already.
An Introduction to Darkhaven
As far as storyline and characters go, there's not a great deal as you can imagine for a project so early in development. While you are locked to just one class/character you do get a selection of 3 skills to start with and can put points into the others as you progress. Your focal point is Lum, the local guy around a fire who hands out quests and tells you what you should be doing. What you should be doing includes killing this thing, investigating that thing, and searching around the lands. By the time you've done the quests (the searching around the lands is a bit of a piss-take, basically explore the whole map) you should be powerful enough to entire the Necropolis (which is now constantly expanding over other areas) and find the big boss.
Along the way you'll find a good number of dungeons, each sporting their own mini-boss and even on medium difficulty the demo had a few places that were more challenging than I was expecting, but for the demo you just respawn at the nearest teleport with all your possessions. The leveling is very important, and I found 1 single level can really make the different between life and death regardless of the weapons and armour you're carrying.
Fighting your way through the crowded Necropolis and defeating the final boss Narlathak (terrible name, not catchy at all...) is a satisfying accomplishment, and if you're still itching for more you can go into another dungeon and grind away until you level up enough to take on the next sub-level, and rinse and repeat until you get sick of it.
Final Verdict
It will be interesting to see how far this project goes given that it's basics and core concept have now been seen and played by many, yet the Kickstarter is sitting at just over half-way to success (as of time of writing). I wish the team the very best success and hope they're able to polish and complete this project in the next ~12 months to avoid losing hype and people forgetting about it.
The cat's out of the bag now and as with most alpha / demo / early access titles it feels like there's a ticking clock started where they have a chance to win over the masses. Els they risk ending up on the bargain pile from release as the game could be forgotten about or remembered purely for its pre-alpha jank if they take too long.