Dark Scrolls Complete Guide: All 9 Heroes and Zones 2026

This Dark Scrolls complete guide pulls together every guide GameBrief has published on doinksoft's co-op roguelite into one hub: hero unlocks, tier rankings, build theory, dungeon structure, the co-op ghost system, and our review verdict. Dark Scrolls launched on Steam and Nintendo Switch on June 22, 2026, from doinksoft (Gato Roboto, Gunbrella), published by Devolver Digital, pairing an autoscrolling shmup-style platformer with roguelite progression across nine playable heroes. If you already know which article you need, jump to the section below. If you're starting from zero, read this page top to bottom first.

TL;DR: Dark Scrolls is doinksoft's co-op roguelite, out June 22, 2026 on Steam and Switch, currently $9.99. Nine heroes total: seven names are consistent across our own coverage (Grizz, Pigeon, Emerys, Biscuit, Nezumi, Confit, Saturn), and two remain genuinely disputed even between our own guides. Runs take 30 to 50 minutes through procedurally branching zones, with Bruce and Goose's Shoppe appearing between each one. Co-op ships with local, online, and Remote Play Together at launch, plus a ghost mechanic that keeps dead players contributing instead of just watching. Our review scored it 8.0/10; Steam's own review label currently reads Mixed.

Key takeaways

• Developer: doinksoft (Portland studio behind Gato Roboto, Gunbrella, and the physical-only Demon Throttle), acquired by Devolver Digital in April 2023. Dark Scrolls is its first release as a full Devolver studio.
• Publisher: Devolver Digital. Released on Steam and Nintendo Switch June 22, 2026, currently $9.99 with no active discount, verified against the live Steam listing, though the price was oddly missing from the store page for the first day or so after launch.
• 9 heroes total, confirmed on the live Steam page ("nine distinctive heroes with unique skills") and in every guide on this site.
• Steam's own short description calls it "a fantasy-themed action platformer that fuses shmup-style chaos with roguelite progression."
• Solo, local co-op, online co-op, and Remote Play Together are all present at launch, day one, per Steam's category listing.
• Runs take roughly 30 to 50 minutes. The dungeon uses procedurally branching zones rather than a fixed floor count.
• A 0-to-5 star meter fuels burst attacks and perk thresholds. Bruce and Goose's Shoppe sells perks, devastating attacks, and summoned allies between zones.
• As of this writing, Steam lists Dark Scrolls as Mixed (150 reviews, roughly 63% positive), against our own review score of 8.0/10.
• Dark Scrolls Best Builds: All 9 Heroes Ranked 2026: Shoppe perk priority and co-op pairings for every named hero.
• Dark Scrolls Hero Tier List: All 7 Heroes Ranked 2026: S-tier through C-tier rankings, plus how the picture changes in co-op.

What is Dark Scrolls?

Dark Scrolls is doinksoft's hack-and-slash co-op roguelite: pick one of nine heroes, fight through procedurally generated runs built from hand-crafted rooms, and spend coins at Bruce and Goose's Shoppe between zones to build toward a run-ending boss. It launched June 22, 2026, published by Devolver Digital, the same publisher that acquired doinksoft in April 2023 following Gato Roboto, Gunbrella, and Demon Throttle. The pitch, and the joke, is baked directly into the Steam page: your quest is literally to "[INSERT GOAL HERE]."

For the full launch context, including doinksoft's studio track record and why a bigger publisher push behind the studio's fourth game was worth watching before release, see our Dark Scrolls launch coverage. It also covers what made Dark Scrolls' day-one co-op lineup unusual for the genre at the time.

Heroes: unlocking and tier list

Nine heroes total is the one number every guide on this site, and Dark Scrolls' own Steam page, agrees on. Three are unlocked from your very first run: Grizz (arcing thrown axes and a ground-pound chain), Pigeon (rapid-fire daggers that can angle downward), and Emerys (bouncing magic orbs plus a defensive orb shield). Biscuit, a dog freed from a cage during the Stage 1 boss fight, is the fourth, and it's widely regarded as the strongest dedicated co-op pick on the roster for its bark stun. Nezumi is the fifth and the mechanical outlier: it isn't found in the dungeon at all, it's bought at the hub town for roughly 100 gems earned from run score, and it equips Shoppe abilities for free through saxophone note sequences instead of spending coins on them. Confit (the steak-throwing chef) and Saturn (an enemy-abducting crowd-control hero found through dungeon exploration) round out a seventh and eighth name that every guide agrees on.

That leaves two roster slots we're not going to pretend are settled. Our own coverage disagrees with itself here: three earlier articles on this site, the launch news post, the best builds guide, and the dungeon guide, name the final two heroes as "Ironbeard" (a short-range melee hammer) and "Quinn" (a bow-and-healing-aura fairy) with specific ability descriptions. But the two most recently published guides in this cluster, the hero tier list and the hero unlock guide, both explicitly walk that back, describing two heroes as still unnamed in wider community sources as of their publication dates. We checked Dark Scrolls' live Steam page while building this hub, and it doesn't name individual heroes either, just confirms nine total. Rather than pick a side, we're flagging the disagreement here: treat "Ironbeard" and "Quinn" as provisional until a newer guide on this site, or an official patch note, settles it one way or the other.

For unlock triggers, the Dark Scrolls unlock heroes guide walks through every known method in detail, including the exact steps for Biscuit's cage and Nezumi's gem purchase, plus general advice for finding the remaining in-dungeon secrets. For how the roster stacks up against itself, the Dark Scrolls hero tier list ranks S-tier Grizz and Pigeon, A-tier Biscuit and Nezumi, and B/C-tier Emerys, Saturn, and Confit, with a separate breakdown of how co-op reshuffles those rankings (Biscuit jumps to S-tier once a partner is in play).

Best builds

Every hero in Dark Scrolls has one fixed weapon type. The Shoppe perks you stack modify that base rather than replacing it, and the same rule shows up independently across our builds guide, our tips guide, and our dungeon guide: pick one direction and stack it, rather than buying whatever perk sounds most interesting at the moment. Shuriken (a bonus projectile alongside your main attack) is the strongest pick on projectile heroes like Grizz and Pigeon. Thorns (contact-damage reflection) rewards heroes who close distance, Biscuit's pinball form especially. Summoned allies are the safe, direction-agnostic pick for anyone who needs independent screen coverage, particularly useful in co-op where they keep a support player's damage flowing while they're covering a partner.

Grizz is the widely recommended starting build: his arcing axes hit multiple enemy heights without requiring precise aim, his ground pound chains across clustered enemies, and his sneeze burst clears a screen when the star meter fills. Pigeon has a higher ceiling once you adjust to her shorter effective range, and Biscuit remains the strongest dedicated co-op pick because the bark stun buys a partner free hits on an otherwise-moving group. Nezumi is the build outlier discussed above: real reward, real learning curve.

The Dark Scrolls best builds guide has the full Shoppe priority list for every named hero, specific co-op hero pairings (Grizz and Pigeon, Biscuit and Grizz, Emerys and Nezumi), and a step-by-step routing checklist for a first full run from hero select to final boss.

Dungeon floors

Dark Scrolls doesn't use a numbered floor system the way a lot of roguelikes do. Runs move through themed dungeon zones assembled procedurally from hand-crafted rooms, so two runs through the "same" zone feel related but never identical, and the specific screen count varies run to run because of branching paths. What's consistent across every run: each zone ends in a boss encounter, Bruce and Goose's Shoppe always appears between zones (never mid-zone), and the autoscroll pace measurably accelerates the deeper you go.

Early zones, roughly the first two, are built to teach scroll timing more than to threaten you outright. The middle zones start punishing passive, back-of-screen play once projectile-heavy enemies enter the mix, forcing forward momentum as the correct default rather than an option. Later zones compress traps directly into standard combat rooms instead of isolating them in dedicated hazard rooms, so you're managing spikes and enemies at the same time, with a lot less room to read a screen before committing to a move.

We're not giving a total zone count here because none of our Dark Scrolls guides state one, and the branching structure means there may not be a single fixed number to give in the first place. The Dark Scrolls dungeon guide covers zone-by-zone enemy types, exactly when to spend at the Shoppe across a full run, and which heroes handle the late-zone difficulty spike most cleanly.

Co-op and the Ghost system

Dark Scrolls shipped with solo play, local co-op, online co-op, and Remote Play Together all present on day one, matching both our launch coverage and Dark Scrolls' live Steam category listing. That's still unusual for a pixel-art roguelike. Couch co-op in particular tends to arrive in a post-launch patch, if it arrives at all.

The mechanic that makes the co-op feel deliberate rather than bolted on is the ghost system. When a player dies in co-op, they don't just spectate. They become a ghost that stays active in the level: it can reposition itself as a platform for the living player to jump on, and it fires weak projectiles that stagger enemies without dealing real damage. A ghost is lost for good if it drifts past the scroll edge, so positioning it, ahead of a tricky jump, inside an enemy cluster, generally toward the right half of the screen rather than the left, is an active skill rather than a passive wait. Reviving costs coins at the Shoppe, or happens automatically if the group reaches a checkpoint with the ghost still in bounds.

Hero pairing matters more in co-op than it does solo. Grizz and Pigeon is the cleanest pairing for players still learning the game, since the two occupy different range bands and rarely compete for the same Shoppe perks. Biscuit and Grizz produces the highest burst-damage ceiling of any pairing documented so far: Biscuit's bark stun holds a group still long enough for Grizz's screen-clearing sneeze burst to connect with nearly every axe instead of a fraction of them. The Dark Scrolls co-op guide covers ghost positioning in more depth, Shoppe coordination between two to four players, and how difficulty scaling actually works as you add players (it's enemy density and Shoppe coin costs that scale up, not scroll speed).

Beginner tips

New players die more often to the autoscroll than to any individual enemy. Dark Scrolls doesn't have a formal tutorial: you're dropped into a run and expected to learn that the scroll boundary is the real threat, not the boss waiting at the end of the zone. Two habits separate a first run that ends in under two minutes from one that reaches a Shoppe visit intact: stay attacking, since the star meter only builds on hits landed, not shots fired from a safe distance, and stop treating the left edge of the screen as safe ground to retreat to.

The other common early mistake is Shoppe indecision. The perk list rotates on every visit, and spreading picks across incompatible categories, a projectile modifier and a trajectory-changer in the same run, for instance, produces a mediocre generalist build rather than a coherent one. One perk that matches your hero's weapon type, bought consistently across visits, beats two unrelated ones nearly every time. The Dark Scrolls beginner tips guide walks through a recommended structure for your first three runs, starting with a coins-untouched observation run and ending with your first deliberate Shoppe pick.

Is Dark Scrolls worth playing?

Our full review scored Dark Scrolls 8.0 out of 10, calling it doinksoft's best work: nine heroes with genuinely distinct playstyles, a Shoppe synergy system that rewards planning without punishing improvisation, and co-op that works properly at launch without waiting on a patch. The half-point deductions came from specific, named friction rather than a structural problem with the game: Nezumi's note-sequencing system has a steep learning curve with limited in-game explanation, later zones spike in difficulty faster than earlier zones telegraph, and the price was oddly undisclosed on the store page during the first day or so after launch.

That last point has resolved itself since the review published. Right now, Dark Scrolls is $9.99 on Steam with no active discount, checked directly against the live store page while building this hub. Steam's own review aggregate currently reads Mixed, at roughly 63% positive across 150 reviews, a real gap worth being upfront about against our own 8.0 score. A Mixed label early in a roguelite's life is common and often reflects exactly the kind of friction our review called out (the difficulty spike, Nezumi's learning curve) rather than a fundamentally broken game underneath, but it's a genuine data point if you're deciding whether to buy in at launch pricing versus waiting for a patch or two.

All Dark Scrolls guides

Every article that fed into this Dark Scrolls complete guide, in one place:

• Dark Scrolls: Devolver Co-op Roguelike Launches June 22: launch coverage, doinksoft's studio history, and the day-one co-op mode lineup.
• Dark Scrolls Unlock Heroes Guide: All 9 Characters: every known unlock trigger, from Biscuit's cage to Nezumi's gem purchase.
• Dark Scrolls Hero Tier List: All 7 Heroes Ranked 2026: S-tier through C-tier rankings, plus solo vs co-op tier shifts.
• Dark Scrolls Best Builds: All 9 Heroes Ranked 2026: Shoppe perk priority and co-op hero pairings for every named hero.
• Dark Scrolls Dungeon Guide: All Floors and Zones 2026: zone-by-zone enemy types and Shoppe buy timing across a full run.
• Dark Scrolls Co-op Guide: Ghost System and Hero Pairings: the ghost mechanic, revive economy, and co-op difficulty scaling explained.
• Dark Scrolls Tips: 9 Things to Know Before First Run: beginner fundamentals covering the autoscroll, the star system, and the Shoppe.
• Dark Scrolls Review: 9 Heroes, One Sharp Roguelite: the full 8.0/10 verdict on gameplay, co-op, and where the game loses points.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Dark Scrolls? Dark Scrolls is doinksoft's co-op hack-and-slash roguelite, published by Devolver Digital on June 22, 2026. Pick one of nine heroes, fight through procedurally generated runs, and spend coins at Bruce and Goose's Shoppe between zones to build toward a final boss.

How many heroes are in Dark Scrolls? Nine total, confirmed on the live Steam page and every guide on this site. Seven names are consistent across our own coverage: Grizz, Pigeon, Emerys, Biscuit, Nezumi, Confit, and Saturn. The last two roster slots are disputed even between our own guides, see the heroes section above.

How do you unlock Biscuit in Dark Scrolls? Free the dog from the cage during the Stage 1 boss fight. Biscuit joins your permanent roster the moment you do it and stays available on the hero select screen for every future run, including if you die during that same run.

How does the ghost system work in Dark Scrolls co-op? A dead co-op partner becomes a ghost that stays active in the level, able to platform for the living player and fire weak stagger shots. It's lost for good if it drifts past the scroll edge. Revive it at the Shoppe or by reaching a checkpoint.

How many dungeon floors does Dark Scrolls have? There isn't a fixed floor count. Dark Scrolls uses procedurally branching zones assembled from hand-crafted rooms, with a boss and a Shoppe visit between each one, so the exact number of screens varies from run to run.

Is Dark Scrolls worth playing? Our review scored it 8.0/10 for nine genuinely distinct heroes and co-op that works at launch. Steam's own review label currently reads Mixed at roughly 63% positive, which is worth weighing against our score before buying at launch price.

How much does Dark Scrolls cost? $9.99 on Steam, confirmed live with no active discount. The price was oddly missing from the store page for the first day or so after the June 22, 2026 launch, which our review flagged as a launch-week rough edge.

References

• Dark Scrolls on Steam
• Devolver Digital: Dark Scrolls
• doinksoft on Twitter/X