Game: A Dark Room
Target Audience: Caters towards an older audience – one with more patience and that does not require fun visuals to be engaged. Because it is text based, it obviously is only accessible to literate players.
Creator: Double Speak Games, Michael Townsend
Platform: Web browser [original]
At first glance, A Dark Room feels empty because it is empty. There is nothing but a few snippets on a screen and a button that says “stoke fire.” The only mechanic is to click the singular button available and only once. The button requires a cool-off period before it can be clicked again.
The start of the game. Only one action (“stoke fire”) is available.
The screen, mostly occupied by whitespace, is the only form of the game. Though the narrative unfolds through text, there is no exposition nor dialogue. Rather the world of the game is slowly hinted at through the text on the left side of the screen and the actions and resources that become available to the player as the game progresses.
Eventually, a stranger stumbles in and reveals herself to be a builder. She can build you a cart to gather more wood, a trap to collect animal parts (teeth, fur, meat), and a hut to begin building a village. As more resources become available, more actions are unlocked, such as checking the traps, and more structures become available to build, unlocking more resources – the cycle continues. A gameplay pattern reveals itself as the world of the game slowly expands with more resources and actions available. Though there is no exposition, the resources and minor events that take place start to shed light on the state of the world.
Wild beasts occasionally attack the growing village, killing “wanderers” that come to settle. But, as the pattern dictates, these wanderers/villagers will soon be replaced by whoever stumbles upon the village. What does “price is unfair mean”? Nothing is certain except that the world is violent and impersonal. I don’t even know my character’s name, much less what I look like. I am just the architect of this village.
Slowly, more clues are revealed. There are pieces of “tattered cloth” found in the trap along with strange scales, fur, meat and teeth, suggesting that perhaps more than just the wild beasts find their ways into the traps. We are left to wonder – where does the cloth come from? Why would we want to salvage teeth?
Eventually, the player can build a trading post and buy a compass from the post, allowing them to explore outside the confines of their village. Out here, the world is even more violent. It is difficult to take even a few steps (with the keyboard arrows) without encountering a dangerous beast. The map is discoverable only as the player starts moving around it, discovering caves and ruins, though we are unsure what was ruined.
I stopped playing at this point, begrudgingly, because I had other obligations to take care of. But, the expansive nature of the game’s world pulls you in. While the gameplay pattern becomes apparent rather quickly, the narrative scope is unpredictable. What more clues will be revealed through the ever growing number of resources, actions, and events? This unpredictability and uncertainty about how the world will develop draws the player in and keeps them hooked. We know nothing but little scraps about the world, and we hope to keep piecing the picture together. Additionally, as Michael Thomsen writes in the New Yorker, it “stimulates a very modern impulse to constantly check and recheck one’s phone.” You can play it in the background – after all, it only requires you to check and click every ~30 seconds.
Ultimately, the formal elements of curiosity and discovery propel the player forward. This, itself, is grounded in the dynamics of resource scarcity and the occasional depletion of resources through various events. The management of resources allows you to build and explore, paving the way for discovery. Exploration is necessary to uncover the embedded narrative.
Ethics:
Though I didn’t make it to the end of the game, I read the plot in Wikipedia to sate my curiosity. The impersonal nature of the other characters emerges more strongly in the game when they are treated as slaves. They never had identities to begin with, but now even the slightest sliver of humanity has been stripped away from them. The game does not describe or depict any bodies, but it does treat supporting characters as cattle. They are laborers, and the main character doesn’t seem bothered by this. I don’t actually think this is ethically bad because it is not as if the game condones this. Rather, I think it is interesting to play a game where you (the player) can’t be the hero. Your actions are predetermined, so you have no choice but to opt in and reflect on the path that led you here.
