A cool mix of incremental/text adventure game. Pretty good prose, and really great tone.
If I played this while fried I'd probably give it a 5 stars
Builds on the incremental game genre extremely well. Played it back in 2015 or 2016 and I could still appreciate it's simplicity to this day. Love to see good game mechanics working fabulously with other game mechanics.
An incredible incremental-like game, really captivated me with the progression and the RPG exploration at the end. Interesting and dark story hidden within the game - you are the monster, and may barely realize it at least through the first playthrough. Replayed this many times just for the fun of it, enjoyable at all points of the incremental steps. Never tried the phone version.
Beaten it on both browser and Android app, the browser one has more QoL but has little to no storyline while the Android version is more engaging in this sense. It's a good misture of idle/incremental and RPG games, but still not a good idle as Universal Paperclips, worth to play while at office
I can't see
nice incremental game. there arent a lot of "clicker" games that invite replaying but i come back to this every now and then.
One of the original "unfolding" games that showed you could make an idle game that builds itself out as you go. Half the fun is seeing where it goes, so I won't spoil the narrative that develops, but it was satisfying and surprising. Brief but good.
The third act drags if you haven't had all the logistics lined up ahead of time (no way to get charms, for instance), but otherwise satisfying.
I played this some on Android, but actually finished in on Windows. While the mobile versions are expanded in terms of features, I think they're lacking in quality-of-life features. In particular, for a game that is at least idle game-adjacent, the mobile version doesn't appear to have any catchup mechanics for when the app isn't running. The navigation between menus is also just somewhat clunky, likely mostly just because they have so much less screen real estate to work with.
The mobile version also adds to the narrative and all of it makes the story much darker and more morally dubious. This may just have been making explicit the intended reading for the original. I don't find it satisfying because it tries to make the player feel complicit without really doing anything with the results, at least as far as I played.
The third act drags if you haven't had all the logistics lined up ahead of time (no way to get charms, for instance), but otherwise satisfying.
I played this some on Android, but actually finished in on Windows. While the mobile versions are expanded in terms of features, I think they're lacking in quality-of-life features. In particular, for a game that is at least idle game-adjacent, the mobile version doesn't appear to have any catchup mechanics for when the app isn't running. The navigation between menus is also just somewhat clunky, likely mostly just because they have so much less screen real estate to work with.
The mobile version also adds to the narrative and all of it makes the story much darker and more morally dubious. This may just have been making explicit the intended reading for the original. I don't find it satisfying because it tries to make the player feel complicit without really doing anything with the results, at least as far as I played.
This review contains spoilers
"actually youre the real villain, because you played the video game instead of just turning it off which was your only other option!"
Minimalism and expansion are the twin principles here. Minimalism that drip-feeds your complicit imagination; expansion that is not about accumulation but level-shifting. Together they twist your expectations – just as you master one rhythm, the music changes. If A Dark Room doesn’t deepen much upon replay, there’s still nothing like your first time.
So the less said, the better. But if you want more, you’ve been warned.
Why so rapacious? Why explore a system, a world anyway? Where does it end? For when wonder yields to hunger, unsatisfied, unsatisfiable, we end up alone, in rooms, playing endless games in the dark.
So the less said, the better. But if you want more, you’ve been warned.
Why so rapacious? Why explore a system, a world anyway? Where does it end? For when wonder yields to hunger, unsatisfied, unsatisfiable, we end up alone, in rooms, playing endless games in the dark.
Don't spoil yourself. Give it a go.
Better than the usual incremental game. Funny how these games, in order to become more tolerable, have to incorporate other genres like RPG and adventure.
Amazing idle game, goes some fun places, avoid spoilers and just check it out!
A good exercise demonstrating some solid ideas, but ultimately very shallow on most axes. The storytelling is barebones, the UI/UX could be much better (the way information is distributed across the UI is just annoying, going in and out of menus to answer simple questions like "how much of X resource do I have?"). I tried this looking for a more narrative incremental game, but it's not an incremental game really (it requires constant player inputs), and it's pretty short and not deep.
I love this one, I can lose interest kinda quick but its a fun little game to return to every so often and have running int he background.
This game's vibe is "Reading the Wikipedia synopses for 'The Blair Witch' and its 2018 sequel despite never having seen either movie, and getting the Jibblies juuuuust a little bit"
Definitely play on Switch, the presentation is immeasurably better than the browser/mobile version, and it's got that dot matrix Game Boy aesthetic.
Definitely play on Switch, the presentation is immeasurably better than the browser/mobile version, and it's got that dot matrix Game Boy aesthetic.
I don’t want to go into much detail about the game, because that would take away from the experience I think. I didn’t think it would go this way, but that’s what I really liked about it. It has some elements I’ve loved in other games, some that I find a bit tedious. But overall, it’s a great game and I was really sucked into it until I finished.
I once built a tiny text adventure myself and now I’m really intrigued and have some ideas I’d maybe want to try. Maybe it’ll land here one day :)
I once built a tiny text adventure myself and now I’m really intrigued and have some ideas I’d maybe want to try. Maybe it’ll land here one day :)
One of the stranger management/sim/point&click/clicker/adventure/meta-RPG I've ever played.
Despite being one of the more barebones titles I've played, there was a distinct sense of depth that A Dark Room that many games don't have today. I went into the game blind and came out having experienced beyond my expectations. It's interesting how such a bizarre yet creative game as this can remain in my memory after so long.
Despite being one of the more barebones titles I've played, there was a distinct sense of depth that A Dark Room that many games don't have today. I went into the game blind and came out having experienced beyond my expectations. It's interesting how such a bizarre yet creative game as this can remain in my memory after so long.
One of the most memorable games I’ve ever played. It made way more of an impression on me than it had any right doing, giving its self imposed limitations and admitted flaws. Text-based gaming done right.