Ex-Diablo 2 leads have "tons of conflicted feelings" about going up against the iconic ARPG with their new indie competitor Darkhaven

Darkhaven is a new ARPG "made by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo 2," and its developers are now part of an extremely exclusive club of people being forced to compete against their own game.

If you're an indie developer coming out with a new ARPG, Diablo is obviously the standard bearer that your game will inevitably be compared to. And with Diablo 2, arguably the most beloved game in the Blizzard franchise, having recently added its first new class in 25 years, Darkhaven is gearing up to launch in competition with a revitalized version of one of the most iconic ARPGs of all time, and one the founders of Darkhaven studio Moonbeast helped bring to life.

"There's tons of conflicted feelings there," Diablo 2 programmer Peter Hu told PC Gamer. "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."

Added Diablo 2 lead character artist Phil Shenk, "Yeah, we feel the pressure, but I don't hate them for it."

On the contrary, Shenk said there's a sense of pride in seeing the game he and the other folks at Moonbeast helped create still endure some three decades later.

"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 Shenk. "It's super cool. I'm very proud, I guess is the word, just at the fact that it has so much legs."

While obviously Diablo-influenced, Darkhaven isn't quite as derivative as, say, Path of Exile. Darkhaven's Kickstarter campaign describes the game has having "Diablo-like progression, skills, and itemization matched with open-ended, procedurally generated, dynamically responsive, sandbox worlds."

"Made by many of the original creators of Diablo and Diablo 2" are big words for an action RPG, but the Steam Next Fest demo for Darkhaven feels like sampling bread by eating raw flour