Players take on the roles of a crew of criminals who perform various illegal activities (called "scores") such as heists, assassination, or smuggling.

The default setting, Doskvol, is an industrial city where the sun has died and the dead come back as ghosts and vampires.

[12] As of April 2023, Itch.io lists over 300 products tagged as "Forged in the Dark," including the games Beam Saber (Austin Ramsay), CBR+PNK (Emanoel Melo), Bloodstone (Matteo Sciutteri), Songs For The Dusk (Kavita Poduri), and Mutants in the Night (Orion D.

[13] In 2021 it was announced that UK-based production company Warp Films signed a development deal with John Harper to produce a television series based on Blades in the Dark.

Alex Meehan for Dicebreaker named Blades in the Dark one of the best tabletop role-playing games to play in 2024.

[16] In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "The game's default position is that failure is inherently more interesting that success ... and is deployed to encourage recklessness."