"Just the fact that people are playing this 30-year-old game, that it's worth it for them to introduce new content, is amazing to me," said original Diablo 2 lead character artist Phil Shenk on a call with PC Gamer last week. "It's super cool. I'm very proud, I guess is the word, just at the fact that it has so much legs."
Shenk hasn't yet had time to check out Diablo 2's new class himself, though. Along with the rest of Moon Beast Productions, which also includes Diablo 2 programmer Peter Hu (also on the call) and designer Erich Schaefer, he's been busy preparing a Kickstarter campaign to fund its continued development. At the time of writing, Moon Beast has raised $200,000 toward a $500,000 goal with 25 more days to go.
I asked Shenk and Hu how it feels to find themselves in competition not only with the Diablo games that came after their time at Blizzard, but also Diablo 2 itself, now that it's been remastered, released on Steam, and bestowed with new DLC.
"There's tons of conflicted feelings there," said Hu. "Yeah, not gonna lie about that … We're an indie company in a way, going up against a giant, and that's a tough hill to climb."
"Yeah, we feel the pressure, but I don't hate them for it," said Shenk.
Shenk also pointed out, however, that the vision for Darkhaven is not just to make another Diablo 2, so it's yet to be seen where their players come from. Moon Beast is aiming for something that sounds like a mix of Diablo and modern survival games like Valheim and Enshrouded, with "open-ended, procedurally generated, dynamically responsive sandbox worlds." The bullet points include deformable terrain, digging and mining, building, mod support, and the option to play solo, with a group of friends, or in massively multiplayer servers.
It's an ambitious project, which is why Moon Beast wanted to have a playable demo in the public's hands before launching its Kickstarter campaign—something to prove that they have a working piece of software and not just a bunch of cool ideas. They've spent over four years on the game so far, funded by venture capitalists and their own money.
I'm impressed by the world included in the demo, a good sign that the commitment to mod support is legit. It's also not every day you launch an ARPG and discover that you can double jump and swim.
You can try out the Darkhaven demo for yourself
