Darksburg

Darksburg launched into Early Access in February 2020 and hit 1.0 in September 2020 from Shiro Games (Northgard devs), a top-down co-op zombie survival brawler with cartoony art and 4-player PvE missions. The game mixed Left 4 Dead's co-op structure with twin-stick shooting and hero-based abilities, set in a plague-ravaged medieval town. Reviews were mixed—critics appreciated the art style and accessible gameplay but noted shallow progression, repetitive missions, and a tiny playerbase that made finding matches difficult. StreamerHouse's 207-viewer peak in 2020 came during the 1.0 launch window when the game briefly had players, but the community evaporated within weeks. Steam reviews settled at Mixed (around 60%), with players praising the core loop but lamenting the lack of content and dead multiplayer. Darksburg's problem was launching into an oversaturated co-op PvE market (Left 4 Dead, Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide 2) without a compelling hook beyond "cute zombies." Shiro Games is a talented studio, but Darksburg felt like a side project that needed another year of content updates to justify asking players to commit. It's competent, charming, and completely forgotten—another indie co-op game that launched, failed to find its audience, and faded into Steam's endless backlog graveyard.