"A Dark Room" is text only game made by doublespeak games written in Javascript. It's a single player adventure/RPG type of game reminiscent of games back before I was born, so I can't exactly say when. But a long time ago for sure. I played this game to completion while waiting for my code to "compile" at my last job, and this is what I thought. No spoilers. I will try my hardest, because it definitely needs to be experienced.
The Story
Because every good game needs one. Except in this case, you kind of feel like you're making your own story. You wake up. It's dark. So you light a fire. And where you go from there is kind of up to you. This simplicity is what makes the game. Because you have no idea where it will go next. And believe me, it goes places. When I first started I thought it was broken because there wasn't much going on, on the screen. The game slowly starts to add features that help progress the storyline forward and you can start to picture how you ended up in "A Dark Room". It's a post apocalyptic game in it's most basic of forms, with a hint of crafting and item collecting and surviving.
The Gameplay
Very unique gameplay. The game area is comprised of 3 sections: The activity feed, the main action pane and your inventory. I didn't really check the activity feed much during the game, as you'll probably spend most of your time gathering equipment and checking your timers. Every action you take in the game starts a timer for that action, and you can't repeat it until it is finished. Some obviously take much longer than others, so you'll have to find a pattern so that you will keep busy in the meantime. For the first half of the game you only use your left-click button. You will sporadically get an alert box asking you to make choices that may help or hurt you. Initially these events come in handy big time. After about the halfway mark, you can probably ignore them and have it not affect the story. I kind of became addicted to increasing my inventory after a while and kind of spaced out and forgot there was a whole other "world" out there to discover.
Yeap, it's that kind of game B)
As you see above, there is inventory. You start with the most basic of items in a craft game, wood. As the game progresses you can use the collected wood to create bigger and better things, and eventually you'll be working to maintain that new supply of iron ore.
The Graphics
Sometimes simpler is better. In this case, it just works.
It's 99% text with a button here or there. Later on in the game, there is some clever use of the text though and it opens up the "world" even more.
Final Thoughts
This game is the perfect example that you don't need fancy graphics to make a fun and addicting game. Heck, you don't need any graphics at all. And it's free, if you're playing on your browser. There is a new iOS version that was recently released, that will set you back .99$. I will continue this journey on my browser for the time being. There are other text-based games currently out in the interwebs, like CandyBox, which plays totally different than A Dark Room but is still 100% fully text and has its own charm.
Pros:
- Despite being text-only, it still takes a few hours to complete
- The mechanics change the more you play
- Not resource intensive (duh)
Cons
- Not enough replay value
- you might end up waiting a long time to continue the storyline
Walter Guevara is a software engineer, startup founder and currently teaches programming for a coding bootcamp. He is currently building things that don't yet exist.
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