{"id":30984,"date":"2026-02-17T11:09:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T11:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/?p=30984"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:09:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T11:09:27","slug":"darkhaven-demo-crowdfunding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/guide\/darkhaven-demo-crowdfunding\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Diablo Developers Release Darkhaven Demo And Crowdfunding Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We first <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/darkhaven-announced\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">reported<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on <a href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/3571870\/Darkhaven\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Darkhaven<\/strong><\/a>, a new action RPG from the developers of the original <strong>Diablo<\/strong> games, earlier this month. Since then, the game\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/moonbeastproductions\/darkhaven-an-action-rpg-with-dynamic-worlds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">crowdfunding campaign<\/a> has gotten underway, and it has already amassed $95,000. Furthermore, a new Steam demo has dropped to give interested gamers a glimpse of what to expect and encourage them to back the project early.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The demo offers several hours of open-ended ARPG gameplay inside a persistent sandbox world. Players can progress the Witch class to level 8, experimenting across three skill trees focused on mobility, positioning, and resource management.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Designed for solo play, cooperative adventures, and high-stakes PvP-enabled realms, <strong>Darkhaven<\/strong> is set in a procedurally generated, fully dynamic, and persistent world. Terrain and structures are deformable and buildable, allowing players to dig through earth, tunnel through dungeon walls, drain lakes to uncover buried ruins, redirect lava flows to reshape battlefields, or rebuild shattered fortresses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cFor us, this is about proving potential. The strange, ambitious, sometimes chaotic ideas that we believe can push the ARPG genre forward\u201d, said <\/span><b>Erich Schaefer<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer. \u201cThere\u2019s dust on the edges, but there\u2019s also real experimentation, and a strong look at our bold new ideas taking shape. Our goal with this demo is to show two things at once. First, that we\u2019re staying true to the addictive core of classic <strong>Diablo<\/strong>-style gameplay \u2013 progression, itemization, and build synergies. Second, we want to\u00a0 deliberately break from the pack in how worlds evolve, how replayability works, and how much agency players have over the land itself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis demo is a sincere love-letter to our fans, past and future,\u201d said <\/span><b>Philip Shenk<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, co-founder and CEO. \u201cAn invitation to see what <\/span><b>Darkhaven <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">could become, and to help bring it to life through our <strong>Kickstarter<\/strong> campaign.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Darkhaven Gameplay Announce Trailer\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GA4_EeckArA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We first reported on Darkhaven, a new action RPG from the developers of the original Diablo games, earlier this month. Since then, the game\u2019s crowdfunding campaign has gotten underway, and it has already amassed $95,000. Furthermore, a new Steam demo has dropped to give interested gamers a glimpse of what to expect and encourage them [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":30633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[139,205,316,24],"class_list":["post-30984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guide","tag-crowdfunding","tag-darkhaven","tag-moonbeast-productions","tag-steam"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retronews.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}