PAX East 2019 Videogame Preview: ‘Mistover’

As a monstrous fan of Darkest Dungeon I was very interested in checking out Mistover at PAX East which the developer billed as a mashup of that game and Etrian Odyssey. Having visited the booth and chatted with the development team, I am very intrigued by what I saw.

The art style is very similar to Darkest Dungeon, as is the dark scope of the project, but the rest is a very different experience. Gameplay in Mistover is divided between overland exploration and encounters. The exploration uses resources such as light and food, which requires careful resource management to balance everything.

Traps and environmental effects can compromise the characters and impact health and resource availability. The goal is to reach the exit of the dungeon or area and get as many resources as possible on the way. The Mist is always around and enemies are always hungry to attack the characters. Bushes can be used to hide in and character skills can clear obstacles or help the party disappear.

The gameplay was quite fun, with a lot of strategy required to navigate the map safely, constantly looking at health and resources. There are eight character classes, which give a wide range of tactics available, but of course healing characters are always necessary.

I did not get a chance to see the hub point of the game but was told more characters can be recruited, skills improved and loot utilized. The battles are very interesting, with a lot of tactics available such as team-up attacks, depending on positioning, or multiple hits depending on the attacks.

Resource management is key in battles as well, because special attacks need their own pool, so the big attacks need to be rationed so the battle can be won. The more I dug into the game the more I was impressed with its depth.

At the surface I took this as a pure Darkest Dungeon clone, but developer Krafton has brought a lot of depth and originality to Mistover while drawing positive similarities to Darkest Dungeon – which I consider one of the best games of the last five years.

There is no fixed release date for Mistover but the developer has announced it will come out this year (hopefully late summer) for PC and Switch platforms. Thinking about this on the mobile Switch option gets me pretty interested, as this is a great on-the-go style of game, well worth checking out once it’s released.