Dark Scrolls Tips: 9 Things to Know Before First Run

These Dark Scrolls tips cover what the game doesn't bother telling you before it starts scrolling. Dark Scrolls is doinksoft's co-op hack-and-slash roguelike, published by Devolver Digital on June 22, 2026, and while the chunky pixel art looks approachable, the first run tends to end faster than expected. The screen moves constantly. You move with it or you die. That single fact shapes every other decision in the game.

TL;DR: The screen scrolls automatically and will kill you if it pushes you offscreen, so keeping up is priority one. Build your five-star meter by attacking, spend coins at Bruce and Goose's Shoppe on perks that stack together, and in co-op, a dead partner becomes a ghost who still helps. Each of the nine heroes has fixed weapons and a distinct playstyle, so pick one that fits how you already move.

Dark Scrolls tips: what new players get wrong first (quick answer)

Most early deaths aren't about the enemies. They happen because a player stops moving to fight something in the wrong spot, the scroll edge catches up, and that's it. Dark Scrolls is an autoscrolling platformer first and a roguelike second. Surviving long enough to buy perks and stack a build means treating the scroll boundary as the most dangerous thing on screen, not the boss at the end of the level.

The second most common issue is not attacking enough. The star system rewards constant aggression. Standing back to observe costs you star progress and the burst attacks that come with it.

The autoscroll is the real difficulty

Nothing in the game's description is dishonest about this, but it doesn't fully prepare you either. Each room and level scrolls steadily to the right. The pace is "measured," as one preview put it -- not so fast that survival requires inhuman reaction time, but fast enough that stopping to dig a stuck character out of a corner will get them killed.

Three practical consequences for early runs worth internalizing:

The risk-reward on chests is constant. A chest visible to the left of your current position might require dropping back toward the scroll edge to open it. Worth it sometimes, fatal if the timing is wrong.

You can't park and wait for a safe moment. The game doesn't have safe moments at the scroll edge. If you prefer holding position and reading patterns before committing, Dark Scrolls will punish that instinct hard. The fix is learning to dodge while moving forward, not dodging and stopping.

Enemy placement respects the scroll logic. Enemies spawn ahead of you and are designed so that fighting them doesn't require backtracking. When a layout feels like it's trying to push you back, that's usually a trap for a chest or an alternate path, not a design error.

A flaming combat run in the village biome. Skull enemies spawn in pairs. Moving forward and attacking simultaneously is the correct response, not stopping to fight both before advancing.

How the star system works and why you should always be attacking

Each hit on an enemy builds your star meter toward five stars. Stars are not just a score display. They gate your burst attacks and activate temporary perks that are tied to specific star thresholds.

The design quirk worth understanding early: perks assigned to star levels only activate at that exact threshold. If a perk's tied to four stars and your meter drops to three, it's gone until you rebuild. This makes the star system more volatile than typical roguelike power-up stacks. You're always one bad dodge away from losing the buff you just activated.

Aggression isn't just stylistically encouraged here, it's mechanically required. Players who spend too long repositioning between attacks lose their star count and miss the burst attack window. The berserker gets this right automatically since melee range forces constant contact. Ranged heroes like the axe-thrower or arrow-firer build stars more slowly if you're launching shots from the back of the screen and missing.

Three stars is the first meaningful threshold for most builds. Getting there before the first major enemy group is the early-run target.

GODEEPER: Co-op roguelikes with layered progression systems reward different approaches than solo play. 33 Immortals Beginner Guide: 9 Tips for Your First Runs →

Bruce and Goose's Shoppe: what to spend on first

The Shoppe appears between stages. You spend coins collected during the run on a rotating selection of perks, attacks, and summoned allies. The options change between visits, so you won't see the same list twice.

What's confirmed available: Thorns (damage reflect on hit), Shuriken (extra projectile that fires alongside your main attack), Koi Ploy (a fish-based projectile modifier), Reverse (changes attack direction or trajectory), and Fat Stack (appears to stack a coin or stat modifier). The "School your enemies with fish" tagline that appears in the Shoppe isn't misleading. Some perks are genuinely absurd and effective. That's the point.

The Shoppe mid-run. Pick one perk per visit. Koi Ploy adds fish projectiles to your main attack. Thorns punishes anything that gets close. Stack one direction rather than spreading perks across multiple playstyles.

The beginner mistake here is picking the most interesting-sounding perk rather than the most compatible one. Two unrelated perks that both sound strong produce a mediocre run. One perk that directly amplifies your hero's weapon type produces a good one. Shuriken on a knife-thrower stacks cleanly. Shuriken on the saxophone rat doesn't do much.

Allies purchased from the Shoppe follow you through the stage and attack independently, which helps in sections where scroll speed picks up. They're not infinite. Budget coins accordingly rather than spending everything on a single visit.

Step-by-step: how to approach your first three runs

Starting from zero in Dark Scrolls, this is the cleanest path to understanding what you actually have to work with.

Run 1: pick the berserker and don't buy anything. Seriously. Observe the scroll speed, learn when enemies spawn relative to your position, find out where the Shoppe appears. Die without having spent coins so you have a clean read on the default difficulty. This sounds like a waste of a run. It isn't. You'll play two hours longer if you understand the baseline first.

Run 2: focus the star meter. Pick the same hero. Attack everything immediately rather than dodging first. Get to five stars at least once and trigger the burst attack so you know what it feels like. Notice how star count drops when you dodge a long sequence without attacking. The rhythm is build-attack-dodge, not dodge-wait-attack.

Run 3: make one Shoppe decision. Pick the perk that most directly matches what your hero already does. Ranged hero gets the projectile modifier. Melee hero gets Thorns or the ally option. Ignore everything else. One coherent perk beats two unrelated ones. Every time.

By run four or five you'll have a feel for branching paths, the chest risk-reward timing, and whether a hero unlock is worth cutting a run short for.

Tips for playing Dark Scrolls in co-op

The co-op mode changes the run substantially rather than just adding a second health bar to the screen.

The ghost mechanic isn't a punishment. When your partner dies, they turn into a ghost that stays in the level. The ghost can position itself as a platform for you to jump on in sections with tricky verticality. It can fire weak projectiles that stagger enemies without dealing significant damage. Your partner's still playing and still contributing. This keeps sessions from becoming one person watching the other fight. (It's a better design than most co-op roguelikes manage.)

Reviving costs resources. Spend coins at the Shoppe on a revive option or reach a checkpoint with the ghost still in play. Running past a Shoppe visit because you don't think you need the revive is a mistake in co-op. Budget for it the same way you budget for allies.

Combine attacks when the game sets it up. The Shoppe includes builds where two players' perks stack against the same target. If one player has Thorns and the other has an ally that pulls enemies into melee range, that combination isn't accidental. Watch what your partner bought and build in the same direction for the second half of the run.

In co-op the scroll speed matters more. A ghost positioned behind the group is already close to the edge. If you spend time reviving in a bad spot, both players can end up at the scroll boundary. Reviving works best when the active player is ahead of the midpoint, not retreating toward the ghost.

GODEEPER: If you're playing a co-op roguelike with nine hero options, understanding which builds stack well together is the meta layer under the chaos. Lost Castle 2 Beginner Guide: Weapons, Build and First Run →

The nine heroes: what each one actually does

All nine heroes have fixed weapon types and their own side objectives. The hero you pick is the build. Dark Scrolls assigns a weapon category at character select and your Shoppe perks modify that base. You're not building a playstyle from scratch each run, you're modifying a fixed one.

Confirmed weapon types:

• Axes (thrown, return to hand)
• Daggers or knives (close range, rapid fire)
• Arrows (ranged, arc trajectory)
• Fireballs (magic, area effect)
• Saxophone notes (the rat hero, yes, really)
• Steaks (thrown food, the dedicated chaos option)

The burly berserker is the melee archetype: close-range, overwhelming, no projectiles. The saxophone rat is probably the weirdest option, and it's effective once you get the rhythm. Its notes have a spacing that rewards constant forward movement rather than planting and firing.

Each hero has personal side objectives that show up during a run. Completing them unlocks character-specific rewards, separate from the general Shoppe perks. Worth checking when you first pick up a hero. Ignoring them for several runs is fine. Knowing what they are changes how you route through a level.

Hero unlocks happen through specific decisions during runs. The game presents a choice at certain points where the unlock path sometimes means abandoning a Shoppe visit or a chest route. Keep the hero permanently once you pick them up. In early runs, unlock the ones that sound appealing over squeezing every perk out of a single run.

Common mistakes in early runs

Stopping to fight an enemy the scroll will handle. An enemy near the left edge is about to be pushed off. You don't need to engage it. Moving forward and leaving it behind costs nothing.

Spreading Shoppe picks across incompatible perks. Three different perk categories make a mediocre generalist build. Pick one direction and stack it.

Playing ranged at maximum distance from the start. Stars build on hit, not on shot fired. Ranged heroes firing from the back of the screen and missing build no meter. Close the distance until you know your effective range.

Leaving the ghost unpositioned in co-op. A ghost sitting near the scroll edge isn't doing much. The ghost's usefulness comes from proactive positioning: ahead of difficult platforming sections, in enemy clusters where stagger helps, or elevated to provide a jump platform over a trap gap. A passive ghost is wasted.

Spending every coin on the first Shoppe visit. Later Shoppe visits sometimes offer better synergies for your specific hero. Banking coins is a real option if the current list doesn't match your build.

Related Reading

• Dark Scrolls Launch: Co-op Roguelike from doinksoft Hits June 22: The announcement and launch preview covering what doinksoft built and why the pedigree from Gato Roboto and Gunbrella matters.
• 33 Immortals Beginner Guide: 9 Tips for Your First Runs: Thunder Lotus's 33-player co-op roguelike has a completely different structure but the same first-run principle: learn the loop before optimizing the build.
• Lost Castle 2 Beginner Guide: Weapons, Build and First Run: The best comparable in the co-op beat-em-up roguelike space right now, with weapon categories and progression decisions worth understanding before your Dark Scrolls build clicks.
• Best Indie Co-op Games Steam Summer Sale 2026: 6 Picks: Context for where Dark Scrolls sits in the June 2026 co-op indie release window.
• Dark Scrolls Co-op Guide: Ghost System and Hero Pairings: Dark Scrolls co-op guide: when a player dies they haunt enemies as a ghost.
• Dark Scrolls Best Builds: All 9 Heroes Ranked 2026: Dark Scrolls best builds guide: 9 heroes ranked for solo and co-op.
• Dark Scrolls Review: 9 Heroes, One Sharp Roguelite: Dark Scrolls review: doinksoft's co-op roguelite delivers 9 distinct heroes, a Shoppe system with real.
• Dark Scrolls Dungeon Guide: All Floors and Zones 2026: Dark Scrolls dungeon guide: how floors progress, enemy types by zone, Shoppe timing between stages,.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Dark Scrolls have a tutorial? No formal tutorial. The game starts scrolling and expects you to adjust. The autoscroll behavior especially catches new players off guard.

How does the star system work? Hit enemies to build toward five stars. Stars fuel burst attacks and activate perks tied to specific star thresholds. Perks only activate at their assigned star level, so they disappear when your count drops.

What's the best hero for beginners? The berserker is the most forgiving starting choice. Close-range melee keeps you attacking constantly and builds stars faster than ranged characters who fire from a distance.

Can you play Dark Scrolls solo? Yes, fully. The game scales to one player. Co-op adds the ghost mechanic and combined attack opportunities, but solo is a complete experience.

How does the ghost mechanic work in co-op? A dead partner becomes a ghost on screen that can act as a platform and fire weak staggering projectiles. They're still contributing to the run. A Shoppe revive or a checkpoint brings them back as a full player.

What does Bruce and Goose's Shoppe sell? Perks, devastating attacks, and summoned allies. Known perks include Thorns, Shuriken, Koi Ploy, Reverse, and Fat Stack. Pick what matches your hero's weapon type rather than whatever sounds most interesting.

How do you unlock more heroes in Dark Scrolls? Through decisions during a run. The game presents choices at specific points where the unlock path sometimes means skipping a Shoppe visit or chest route. Unlocked heroes are permanent.

References

• Dark Scrolls on Steam
• Dark Scrolls Official New Release Date Trailer
• Devolver Digital and doinksoft announce Dark Scrolls for Switch, PC (Gematsu)
• Dark Scrolls preview: worthplaying.com Switch/PC preview