Update, April 14: The Dark and Darker April 14 playtest is live, as promised - but only through a torrent.
Original story, April 12: The Dark and Darker community is falling apart - emotionally, at least - as everyone awaits confirmation of whether or not the game's announced April 14 playtest is actually going ahead amid ongoing legal uncertainties.
Developer Ironmace announced months ago that the next Dark and Darker playtest would run from April 14 through April 19. However, that announcement came just shortly after the studio was accused of stealing game assets from megapublisher Nexon. Since then, there's been a police raid, the game's been delisted from Steam, and we saw a bizarre early rollout of a GoFundMe intended to help cover the studio's legal costs.
The devs have promised to give an update on that playtest "as soon as we can," but all the FAQs and announcements in the official Discord still reference that April 14 date. Is it actually happening? No one knows! And in the absence of official information, fans are coming unglued.
The general chat over on the Discord is barely legible, as some users beg for information from the devs while others post fake press releases to add to the confusion. People are counting down the minutes to every hour as they hope for an announcement. One developer even had to turn off their Spotify display in Discord as fans started to believe their playlist was some kind of secret message about the game.
Things are just as chaotic over on the game's subreddit. There are Majora's Mask memes, conspiracies built around the developers' most innocuous messages, and a fair bit of gallows humor. Everyone's also obsessed with eggs for some reason, and it's here where my will to continue digging into the rapidly-developing lore driving this community's hopium has started to drain away.
All this is to say that Dark and Darker may or may not have a playtest this week, and nobody outside of Ironmace knows which way it's gonna go just yet.
There are plenty of other new games for 2023 to keep an eye on.
