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Published Aug 10, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Crowdfunding for the gothic roguelike’s next chapter begins in October

Image: Red Hook Studios

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Red Hook Studios’ 2016 roguelike role-playing game Darkest Dungeon made players question the sanity of their Dungeons & Dragons characters by focusing on the mental and physical decline of adventurers who spent too much time fighting cultists and abominations underground. The viciously hard game continued with a 2023 sequel, and the studio is releasing new DLC for the original on Aug. 18. But fans will be getting even more heroes fighting horrors, as a crowdfunding campaign is kicking off in October to fund Darkest Dungeon’s next expansion.

Vault Comics will publish a series of canonical graphic novels expanding the mythology of the video game, where players try to save the world from an ancient evil unleashed by their ancestor’s quest for knowledge and power. Horror writer John Lees and Maan House, who drew Titan Comics’ adaptation of Dark Souls, are working with Darkest Dungeon creative director and Red Hook Studios co-founder Chris Bourassa to develop the series.

“I learned to draw from studying the carefully crafted panels of the Bronze Age Batman books, and later, the exuberant splash pages of the Image Comics revolution,” Bourassa said in a statement. “Darkest Dungeon was born of a deep love of this medium, and from day one, I've always dreamed of seeing it on the page.”

The crowdfunding campaign will include rewards for comics collectors along with fans of the game who haven’t read many graphic novels. The goal is to introduce new readers to the game’s dark world and characters, while giving long-time fans more insights into its mysteries.

“When I got to know Chris Bourassa, I learned that X-Men was one of his biggest inspirations, and suddenly it all clicked: Inside the grueling and grim (but often wickedly funny) world of Darkest Dungeon, there was comic book DNA,” Vault chief creative officer Adrian Wassel said in a statement. “Now we get to tell a new story — with the heroes everyone knows — in the comic book medium that’s been swirling around inside the games' blood this whole time.”