Darkest Dungeon 2 is a complete game. The base campaign plus the free updates will give you 40 to 80 hours. Red Hook's continuing content pipeline keeps delivering expansions and updates through 2026. In the meantime, this list from the team at Tyrian Games is what to play, organised by what you specifically wanted more of.
TL;DR
- Darkest Dungeon 2 is a complete experience with ongoing Red Hook content.
- Players who finish it want more: tactical depth, grimdark voice, or run-based punishment.
- Picks range from Battle Brothers to HAWKER in September 2026, ten in total.
- Nothing directly replaces Darkest Dungeon 2's specific stress-and-sanity system, which remains unique in tactical roguelites.
- HAWKER is adjacent rather than identical: different form, same tonal family.
If you want the tactical depth
Battle Brothers (Overhype Studios, 2017). The best turn-based tactical grimdark mercenary game. The company-management layer is closest to Darkest Dungeon's hamlet, and the combat is one of the deepest tactical systems in any indie game.
Wildermyth (Worldwalker, 2019). Tactics plus procedural narrative. Character generation produces emergent stories, and the tactical combat is rewarding across multiple playthroughs.
Othercide (Lightbulb Crew, 2020). Turn-based grimdark with an all-female cast. The visual palette is pure grimdark and the tactical system is sharp.
If you want the grimdark voice
Disco Elysium (ZA/UM, 2019). The best-written grimdark in games. Not tactics, not roguelite, but the tonal match is unmatched elsewhere.
Pathologic 2 (Ice-Pick Lodge, 2019). The most uncomfortable grimdark. Survival sim with a plague in a doomed town, and the voice is one of the most distinctive in any game.
Signalis (rose-engine, 2022). Sci-fi grimdark horror. Inventory-constrained and atmospherically exquisite.
If you want run-based punishment
Rogue Legacy 2 (Cellar Door, 2022). Family-descendant roguelite. Lighter than Darkest Dungeon 2 but shares the persistent-loss-across-runs shape.
Dead Cells (Motion Twin, 2018). Tighter roguelite combat. Not grimdark in tone but the run-based punishment is excellent.
If you want the whole package
Original Darkest Dungeon (Red Hook, 2016). If you haven't played it, start here. Different structure from 2, and the hamlet management is one of the clearest management-grimdark systems in any indie game.
HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026). Grimdark shopkeeper roguelite. Different form from Darkest Dungeon but in the same tonal family. Thirty-day debt to Ankou, mobile caravan, combat that inverts at night. Wishlist on Steam.
What Darkest Dungeon 2 does that nothing else quite replicates
Four specific achievements of Darkest Dungeon 2 worth noting because they help you choose what to play next.
The caravan journey structure. Darkest Dungeon 2's runs are cross-continent caravan trips rather than dungeon dives. This is a structural shift from the first game that some players loved and others rejected.
The stress and sanity system, rebuilt. The sequel redesigned the stress mechanic significantly. It's still distinctive, and it's still the thing nothing else does quite as well.
The flame meter as journey timer. The Flame replaces the first game's torchlight with a larger persistent resource. Managing the Flame across a whole journey is a different kind of decision than managing torch count in a single dungeon.
The hero-pairing relationships. Darkest Dungeon 2 makes heroes' relationships with each other load-bearing in a way the first game only hinted at. Relationships change based on journey events, and the group's cohesion is one of the most important strategic variables.
A first-hand Hawker example
One of the specific Darkest Dungeon 2 lessons we carried into Hawker was about journey as narrative frame. Darkest Dungeon 2 structures its runs as literal journeys from a hub to a destination. That structure does narrative work, because the player feels they're going somewhere even during mechanical combat sequences.
Our first Hawker prototype had the caravan move in abstract segments between outposts. Testers didn't feel the movement. The caravan was just changing locations between days, not travelling.
We rebuilt the caravan movement in 2025 with Darkest Dungeon 2 in mind. Now when the caravan moves between outposts, the movement is an in-game sequence the player can watch. The landscape changes visibly. NPCs may ride along and react. The caravan's wear accumulates visibly. The movement itself is narrative, not a loading screen.
The lesson from Red Hook is that journey structures reward the player emotionally for the transition, not just for the arrival. We can't reproduce Darkest Dungeon 2's scale. We can apply the principle, and it's one of the reasons Hawker's caravan feels like it's going somewhere rather than teleporting between states. We owe Red Hook the design beat, and the rebuild was worth every week of production time.
FAQ
When is the Darkest Dungeon 2 Crypt expansion?
Red Hook has announced continued expansion content through 2026. Specific expansion windows are announced through the studio's development updates.
Is Darkest Dungeon 2 harder than 1?
Different, not strictly harder. The stress system is redesigned, the structure is caravan-based rather than hamlet-based, and the relationships between heroes are load-bearing in ways the first game's weren't.
Is HAWKER like Darkest Dungeon?
Tonally adjacent, structurally different. Both grimdark. One is turn-based tactics, the other is ARPG plus shop.
Best grimdark under 20 dollars?
Original Darkest Dungeon or Battle Brothers on sale. Both frequently dip well under twenty dollars.
Is there a Darkest Dungeon 3 coming?
Not announced at the time of writing. Red Hook is still supporting Darkest Dungeon 2, and the studio has hinted at new projects in interviews without specifics.
The Red Hook post-launch pipeline
A brief note on Red Hook Studios' post-launch approach. Darkest Dungeon's original post-launch content spanned several years of DLC and updates, including the Crimson Court, the Color of Madness, and the Shieldbreaker. Darkest Dungeon 2 is following a similar pattern, with continuing content through 2026 and almost certainly beyond. Players who finish the current 2 content will have new material landing across the year.
This affects how to use the list above. If you finish Darkest Dungeon 2 and want more, the best first move is often to wait a few months for the next Red Hook content drop. The follow-up games on this list are for the gaps between updates rather than replacements for 2 itself.
The relationship-based tactics subgenre
One structural observation. Darkest Dungeon 2 pushed the category toward hero-relationship systems as a load-bearing mechanic. Tactics roguelites that came after often now include relationship-based layers. Wildermyth's character-relationship arcs are adjacent. HAWKER's NPC-relationship memory serves a different function but the design intuition is related. The pattern suggests the category's next five years will see more relationship-based tactics design, and players interested in where the genre goes after Darkest Dungeon 2 should watch for games that extend this specific thread.
Extended genre notes
Worth naming a few observations about the broader indie gaming landscape this category sits in across 2026. The indie market has grown significantly since 2020, with Steam alone now publishing thousands of titles per year. Discovery is the category's biggest challenge, not production. Most players find new games through a combination of algorithmic recommendation, word of mouth, and curated lists like this one.
The 2026 commercial story for the category favours studios that ship with clear positioning rather than studios that ship as genre-default entries. A game that knows who it's for tends to find its audience even at small scale. A game that hopes to be liked by everyone often ends up being recommended by no-one. HAWKER's positioning (grimdark shopkeeper roguelite, Breton folklore, thirty-day clock) is deliberately narrow because narrow positioning travels better than broad positioning in 2026's crowded indie market.
The audience for this category tends to cross generational lines. Players who grew up on 1990s PC games, players who came in through the 2010s indie boom, and players new to indies through 2020s word-of-mouth are all represented. The category isn't age-coded the way some indie genres are, which means studios can build for breadth rather than specific cohorts.
Practical buying advice
If you're using this list to build a reading-and-playing library, a few practical suggestions. Most of the games mentioned go on Steam sale at least twice a year, often at 50 percent or more off. Adding them to your wishlist and waiting for the next sale is usually the most cost-efficient approach. Many of the older entries are cheap year-round. The newer ones often go on sale first during Steam's summer or winter sales. HAWKER's Early Access price is below the planned full-release price, which is standard indie practice.
If you play on handheld (Steam Deck, Switch 2, ROG Ally) most of the games above run well on these platforms. The category tends to be performance-friendly because the production values prioritise tone over graphical fidelity. This is worth knowing because category fans often play across multiple platforms.
For readers who want to go deeper
A closing note for curious readers. Every category above has subcategories we didn't fully explore in this piece, because an individual article can't be everything. If a specific entry hooked you, most of the games in this piece have dedicated communities, Subreddits, Discord servers, and developer blogs worth finding. The wider indie gaming press, including Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, and Polygon, often does deeper coverage on individual games than a cross-category list can.
For players using this piece as a buying guide, the sales cadence on Steam is predictable. Summer and winter sales are the biggest. Smaller themed sales happen throughout the year. Most of the games mentioned have dropped to 50 percent off or more at least once across 2024 to 2026. Wishlisting the games that interest you is how you'll catch the right sale for the right game. Wishlist HAWKER on Steam while you're at it if the grimdark shopkeeper roguelite angle interests you.
For developers reading this piece, the practical takeaway is that the category rewards specific positioning more than broad appeal. Every successful entry above knows exactly who it's for. Studios that try to hit multiple audiences with a single game usually hit none of them. Pick a specific shape, commit to it, and ship the version that audience wants rather than the version you hope will please everyone.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps Hawker at the level of structure and tone. The caravan movement, the journey framing, and the mobile shop are all shown openly in our trailers. Specific late-game journey events sit behind this wall.
Closing
Ten strong follow-ups. Red Hook's ongoing content pipeline keeps Darkest Dungeon 2 itself worth returning to, and the gap between major updates is worth filling with at least one or two of the above.
Add HAWKER to your Steam wishlist.
Next read: Grimdark indie games in 2026, or Best grimdark games Steam 2026.
Further reading
For related context see what is a shopkeeper roguelite.