This is what the game looks like.
As you might expect, A Dark Room begins with you in a room, and as it turns out, that room is dark. Fortunately, you can make a fire to bring light and warmth to the dark room. Stoking the fire for a while leads to other wanderers finding your room, which opens up new actions, which lead to other things happening... From this point, A Dark Room is difficult to classify. At first, it seems like a text-based adventure game, but soon the player is charged with producing and managing resources, and then other gameplay elements are added in, and from there new complications keep appearing. I suppose it could be called a mystery, where the conundrum to be solved is what the game even is.
The one thing that A Dark Room never gives you is any sort of instruction on how to do things or what needs to be done next. You're simply thrown right into the room without so much as a physical description of yourself, and the game actions given to you speak for themselves. One might think that this could be confusing, but there's a certain wonderful simplicity to the style of the gameplay; while new actions keep getting added as the game progresses, they're given at a slow rate to ease the player into getting used to the new factors, and few things get much more complicated than "press this button". Rarely is your full attention required, and then only for short bursts at a time. Certain parts can and should be completed by just leaving the game open to run itself while you do something else. Overall, it does a great job of tying many disparate gameplay elements together in a way that doesn't feel disjointed or rough, but instead carries momentum right up to the all-too-soon conclusion.
This simplicity extends to every element of the game. Rather than show off with fancy graphics, A Dark Room instead confines itself to the black-and-white text-based format, as can be seen in the screenshots here. There's no sound other than what you provide. Occasionally graphics do appear, but they're made entirely out of text too, and the vast majority of the game is just written out. The game's writing is itself very minimalistic; there's little to no dialogue, and every event or object, no matter how major, gets only a bare, straightforward description, no more than a few sentences. Even capitalization is rare.
Normally, such writing runs the risk of coming across as bland and unemotional, but A Dark Room uses this style skillfully and brilliantly. There's layers of characterization and worldbuilding hidden subtly throughout the game's events, and sometimes a single line or even one word can dramatically twist the story. The result is an engrossing narrative where nothing can be taken for granted, and questions the player never even thought to ask get unexpected solutions. Ultimately, the answers to the game's mysteries are never stated outright, instead indirectly implied through the simple descriptions and left largely to the player's imagination. I won't go into much more detail about the plot or setting for obvious reasons, but it's definitely worth pursuing to the end. There's value in playing more than once, to catch details that may have escaped notice the first time but turn out to be shockingly important or foreshadowing (it helps that the game is fairly quick to finish, taking a few hours at most including idling time).
A Dark Room is truly a unique game, one that never seems to be entirely clear in its meaning but constantly leads players onward in search of solutions that only lead to more questions. Combine that with smooth, casual gameplay, fantastic writing, and a genuinely interesting story layered under all that mystery, and the one thing that becomes obvious about A Dark Room is that it's a game that's absolutely worth your time.
As you begin to get the hang of things, the game starts to look more like this. But I'm only scratching the surface...
The one thing that A Dark Room never gives you is any sort of instruction on how to do things or what needs to be done next. You're simply thrown right into the room without so much as a physical description of yourself, and the game actions given to you speak for themselves. One might think that this could be confusing, but there's a certain wonderful simplicity to the style of the gameplay; while new actions keep getting added as the game progresses, they're given at a slow rate to ease the player into getting used to the new factors, and few things get much more complicated than "press this button". Rarely is your full attention required, and then only for short bursts at a time. Certain parts can and should be completed by just leaving the game open to run itself while you do something else. Overall, it does a great job of tying many disparate gameplay elements together in a way that doesn't feel disjointed or rough, but instead carries momentum right up to the all-too-soon conclusion.
This simplicity extends to every element of the game. Rather than show off with fancy graphics, A Dark Room instead confines itself to the black-and-white text-based format, as can be seen in the screenshots here. There's no sound other than what you provide. Occasionally graphics do appear, but they're made entirely out of text too, and the vast majority of the game is just written out. The game's writing is itself very minimalistic; there's little to no dialogue, and every event or object, no matter how major, gets only a bare, straightforward description, no more than a few sentences. Even capitalization is rare.
Even in tragedy, the game rarely breaks tone.
Normally, such writing runs the risk of coming across as bland and unemotional, but A Dark Room uses this style skillfully and brilliantly. There's layers of characterization and worldbuilding hidden subtly throughout the game's events, and sometimes a single line or even one word can dramatically twist the story. The result is an engrossing narrative where nothing can be taken for granted, and questions the player never even thought to ask get unexpected solutions. Ultimately, the answers to the game's mysteries are never stated outright, instead indirectly implied through the simple descriptions and left largely to the player's imagination. I won't go into much more detail about the plot or setting for obvious reasons, but it's definitely worth pursuing to the end. There's value in playing more than once, to catch details that may have escaped notice the first time but turn out to be shockingly important or foreshadowing (it helps that the game is fairly quick to finish, taking a few hours at most including idling time).
A Dark Room is truly a unique game, one that never seems to be entirely clear in its meaning but constantly leads players onward in search of solutions that only lead to more questions. Combine that with smooth, casual gameplay, fantastic writing, and a genuinely interesting story layered under all that mystery, and the one thing that becomes obvious about A Dark Room is that it's a game that's absolutely worth your time.
I've played A Dark Room before, I I know how much the game changes beyond what you touched on here. Its simple exterior masks the fact that the game was crafted very well. Doublespeak knows how video games work.
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