It's hard for many, maybe even most, people in the western world to imagine just how pitch-black a dark night can actually be, and due to light pollution, most people rarely if ever experience true nighttime or real darkness beyond the bedroom or a closed closet, in which they are often blinded by whatever little light they actually have. In addition to casualization and a fear of added complexity or content restriction, I want to mention that making proper night and light effects is probably actually quite hard - or at the very least, I've never seen _any_ game actually do nighttime or 'high-resolution' darkness/light effects justice. It's always a shame when a game gives you torches, infravision spells, night-vision goggles etc.

Darkness is good and should be used more in cRPGs. It can force you to adapt and change the setup of your character(s), for example switching to a single-handed weapon in order to be able to carry a torch, or equipping a melee weapon instead of a ranged one (or vice versa, if you have the means to see in darkness but your enemies don't). It can affect your perception of the battlefield and add a level of uncertainty to combat encounters. It affects how easily you spot your enemies and how easily they can spot you, which should be critical for especially thieves and rogues.

It can provide an environmental challenge that can be combated with torches, spells and magic items. Yeah, but a forest in autumn during a new moon when there's no snow yet can be pretty damn dark.ĭarkness can have a huge influence on gameplay, especially in RPGs.

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