For this week, I chose to play A Dark Room, a web browser text based worldbuilding game developed by Michael Townsend of Doublespeak Games. The game is free to play and available to play online and was released in 2013. It is also available on the Nintendo Switch in 2019 as well. A Dark Room is a single player game that is designed for players who like to make their own stories and explore. I believe it is intended to be played for a long period of time (say multiple hours) due to how the mechanics build throughout the game.
As a disclaimer, this typically isn’t a style of game that I play often, but even so, I feel like Michael Townsend makes attempts at inviting the player to care about their world, such as through the village expeditions and through a clearly thought out enacting narrative, but the general simplicity of the magic circle, pacing of the game, and lack of any clear objectives made it hard for me to care about the player and the world in general.
I’ll start with the positives: there are clear and effective mechanics introduced that invite the player to care about the village they are traversing. For instance, once the player crafts a compass, they are able to begin exploring around the village.
Pre-Battle Screen in A Dark Room
In the above screenshot, you can use some of the items you have collected (cured meat and medicine) in battle with wild animals to collect more materials. This battle and collection engages the player, as this introduces a dynamic of needing to have enough cured meat and medicine to feed the player so they don’t die to an enemy. It creates an aesthetic of caring for the player’s life, which is good in regards to inviting the player to care about the world.
Additionally, the narrative is quite strong in this game in spite of how simple of a game it is visually. Once the player creates a lodge, a popup appears of a backstory between the character the player acts as (Peter) and a woman who finds the lodge (Catherine).
Story Popup for A Dark Room
This popup appears and is the only time that both music and color is used in the game (I only played for about an hour and a half, so there could be other instances afterwards). Townsend allows the player to switch between Peter (the original perspective and the player I believe we are acting as) and Catherine (his sister, and the other perspective). This is engaging and allows the player to get a glimpse into their world rather than just having buttons to click. However, one limitation is that this story did not feel correlated at all with the rest of the gameplay loop of collection and building, so even this positive felt disconnected.
However, the game has several key limitations. The first is that the gameplay loop and magic circle are just too simple to truly be engaging for the player. Aside from the obviously limited visuals, there are some mechanics that I may have cared a lot more about if they were further developed, such as the rickety cart (which Townsend allows the player to click once, but it cannot be further upgraded) and the spoiled meat (the spoiled meat is mentioned in the dialogue / game log, but nothing is really done with its mention). The dialogue / log is a nice touch, but it does not serve much purpose once the hut is unlocked (as there are other mechanics that take precedence over it that the player pays attention to). It is also a strange design decision to add a boundary to the log for the player, as you cannot scroll and view previous messages. This was something that I wished I could see as I wanted to explore the chat logs again after reading the lore between Catherine and Peter, so this in turn made it harder for me to care about the narrative.
Additionally, the pacing of the game is just too slow and from a player perspective at least, it made it harder for me to care about the world.
Cooldowns showcased on A Dark Room
Nearly every element of the collection has cooldowns, which can be bypassed by using hyper., which speeds up the game by 2x, but even so the pacing feels far too slow. For instance, I really wanted to get a compass, but it required a collection of materials for nearly 20 minutes to do so. I wish Townsend generally made the game more interactive, as it over-relies on waiting. This is honestly the biggest reason I myself quit out of the game early more so than the limited visuals, as the pacing just made the game pretty boring.
Lastly, there is no clear objective in the game. This is not necessarily expected as the game is more so based on exploration than challenge, but I personally believe that it would benefit more from the mechanics interacting with each other. For instance, the smokehouse and compass mechanics do interact with each other (as you need to cook food for the battle), but this is the only instance I really saw creating a dynamic between mechanics. Having an objective could assist with this in making the player figure out exactly why each mechanic may be beneficial to them in their quest.
Ethics:
Regarding ethics, there are two things I could think about. The first is that you are playing from the perspective of a male character and a female character (who I believe is Catherine) eventually comes to the village. Each perspective is frustrated with the other and framing them in a negative light, so I could see a gender question / sexism problem coming up if a specific audience takes this story out of context / misunderstands the narrative. Secondly, this game relies heavily on perceived violence, mentioning blood, knives, wild animals, fire, and death. These may be sensitive topics for people and could certainly turn people off from the game. A disclaimer about this– before the game starts– would be nice to have– rather than jumping straight into the game with no context.
