After the game was pulled from Steam due to an ongoing legal battle with Nexon, the developers of Dark and Darker decided to go underground, asking players to torrent their latest playtest. Perhaps to no one's shock, it did not turn out to be the most logistically sound weekend, as Ironmace CEO Terence Park said today on the official Discord server, "The bugs and instability you all had to endure during this playtest, We want to apologize for the hurdles we have had to overcome."

The weekend was indeed marked by numerous outages, with the first torrent download links being pulled from Discord and Twitter first, two subsequent hotfixes also being distributed via torrents, and a lengthy server outage on Saturday. All this in addition to the usual bugs, PvP imbalances, and crashes that are common in alpha testing of online games.

In particular, Ironmace introduced a new map called The Ruins. This is an outdoor setting that is very different from the traditional dungeon-crawling corridors of the previous test, and according to the company, not at all where they wanted it to be. In announcing the first hotfix of the weekend on Saturday, Ironmace said, "We rushed to show off the Ruins map and released it before it was fully ready. The developers changed the loot balance and lighting settings for the new map. On Monday, a second hotfix was made, mainly fixing bugs in class skills.

"The quality is not up to our standards and we will now focus on improving the game for our fans," today's announcement added.

Ironmace posted additional details about the Ruins map issue in Saturday's hotfix. Portals that descend into deeper and more dangerous tiers have been removed and the map is now "single layered." I also increased the value of loot on the map and undid a lighting change that "may have gone a little overboard."

I didn't get a chance to play the first version of the Ruins map, but by the time I got into the game on Sunday I was enjoying it quite a bit. The goblin cave and dungeon maps from the last test felt a bit claustrophobic and it was nearly impossible to avoid combat with other players. The outdoor setting was a nice change, and the more open maps allowed me to play with the torch out to escape by stealth alone. [But then again, I was pulled out of the escape portal not once, but twice in one night, so maybe stealth is not a game after all.

The fear of being outsmarted has gotten the better of me.

Ironmace has not yet announced a date for the sixth playtest, but says it will "do its best to bring the game to fans as soon as possible and update it as much as possible."