Design Reflection
A Dark Room is a single-player, open-source (github) created by Michael Townsend at Doublespeak Games. The target audience is around 13+, and it does seem to have an UI that minimalist players might enjoy alongside its very slow narration. At first, I believed it was a loop based arc, but when I saw the “the fire is dead. the room is freezing,” I began to appreciate the design of the storytelling through its slow interactive features. The main goal is for players to tend to the world around them, where a sense of survival filled with player imagination provide for the unique narration.
One thing of interest from the game that relates to Gabriela Pereira argument on worldbuilding, is that the game should radiate outward from the main character. A Dark Room is a perfect example of this, as the player quite literally does not have any identity tied to themselves, and it’s only through interacting with your inviting, such as stoking a fire, getting wood, building items, that the story progresses as well. Essentially, the player does become this piece of the narration itself, and their emotional state is of great important for deciding certain outcomes.
With games such as Cookie Clicker that has no setting, you still feel like a robot through the entire process without much storytelling going on. A Dark Room gives you that worldbuilding through no identity and an entire world built on your progress.
One thing I found interesting is that new options appear only after the player meets resource constraints, allowing for actions in the narrative plot of the story. Looking at the design of the dark room through words, and where climax is reached through usage of villagers, traps, and weapons, it’s quite interesting that what you are building is towards something you do not know of at the moment.
To further speak on the design, the small collections of an actual journal like narration, allows for players to understand their identity. This loop of going back and forth in piecing information, provides players with the clue that they themselves are a wanderers in this world. Specifically, your identity is tied to the choices you have made, beginning with the fire, a clue of the landing spot for crashed starship. It’s quite interesting such storyline is presented, because one could assume the beginning of the game is one of pure survival in an apocalyptic world, and I personally did not imagine aliens would be involved. Again, such immersion allows for the player to take a role in the story, where you definitely have control over some of your actions — albeit with some repetitiveness.
One thing I would consider with regard to this form of design is a point brought by Pereira: the stories of culture, history, and institutions should surround the main character. A Dark Room doesn’t fully grasp that cultural meaning. For example, by design there aren’t named villagers, no dialogues between players/beings, nor relationships, and in Pereira’s view this is important in game design. Even when things do happens, the emotion behind such actions didn’t really dawn on me. With this in mind, a modification I would propose adding memories of the past. Even as a wandering alien, you could add observations of your surrounding like “Hey, I remember similar patterns of trees from back home…” or “this sound reminds me of my partner….” This would help with the point raised by Pereira, while keeping the minimalist style.
Ethics
A Dark Room is quite different from other games, in that there aren’t many biologically inherent traits. The players identity is quite literally almost secret, which contrasts Dungeons and Dragons’s model, and is something I do appreciate from this web-based game, and actually would not change from it. The one thing I can consider where biological traits play a role are through the wanderer revelation, and perhaps to add onto the mystery of identity, I’d mod the game by removing the alien species’s advantages on their invasion, and make it more about exploration, where the wanderer gathers information from the ship and slowly begins getting memories. Leaving it up to the player to interpret who they are. Fundamentally, the end result would be changed from a “aliens, who are superior in technological and BEINGs of intellect and represent possible colonial powers, take over” to “an unknown species with weapons advantage, takes over.” Personally, I think it adds to the element of mystery, and again leaves us with our interpretation of what this species is and their reasons for attacking.
