A Dark Room

 iOS
User Score
6.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 13 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 13
  3. Negative: 3 out of 13
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  1. slow_learner
    Jun 20, 2014
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I was sold on this game by a Slate review called "The Simple, Text-Based iPhone Game That Will Make You Question Your Own Humanity" and thousands of five-star reviews on iTunes. Having finished it, I do question humanity, but not in the way ADM may have intended. Instead, I wonder, what is wrong with all these people?!

    Despite the Nietzschean pretension at its core, ADM involves hours of grinding for resources in oder to progress through its very thin plot. You get to press timed resource gathering buttons for several hours, and fight monsters, which are preceded by a minimalist announcement such as "a scavenger waits just inside the door", and again involve mashing buttons on timers. There is only about a dozen or so of such enemies, which differ in only how much damage they do and how much health they have. The experience is just slightly more exhilarating than carting wood, which you spend most of your time doing.

    Speaking of plot, the central conflict in the game is between the player character and a "builder" NPC. This paragraph will include a minor spoiler, which you encounter in the first 20-ish minutes of the game, so skip to the next one if you want the surprise (the surprise is not worth it). The builder invites you to build some huts to populate a village you create. Suddenly, the village inhabitants are referred to by game as "slaves", and the builder starts to turn on you, for being to aggressive and expansionistic. You make no choice that makes the villagers become slaves. Why more 'slaves' show up to join your expanding village is also never explained. They seem to do it out of their free will, but why?

    The tension between you and the builder has puzzled me for much of the game, because you don't do anything bad inside your village, and the progression of the game requires you to explore and engage in combat with other NPCs, with no opportunity to negotiate or even disengage. Short of deciding when to build what structure and how often to tap the various resource acquisition buttons, you make no actual moral choices. You do what you have to in order to get a bit more plot, and the builder gets pissed at you for it. The only feeling I got was a vague defensiveness. I guess one could just stay in the village and check traps, instead of exploring the world, but that's clearly not what the game wants you to do.

    I have though long and hard about what others have loved about this game. Maybe they have better imaginations, writing in their own blank slates in to the copious empty space left by the game's designers? Maybe they have a higher tolerance for grinding out resources? Maybe I am not really human? I still don't know.    … Expand
  2. kuehnau
    Apr 13, 2014
    4
    People have been ranting and raving about how good 'a dark room' is and how simplistic it is. That is not only it's greatest strength, but also it's greatest flaw.

    Don't get me wrong, I grew up in the age of Pong, Zork and online Telnet games known as MUDs. But there's a huge difference between these games and a dark room. While games like Zork had an ever progressing storyline,    People have been ranting and raving about how good 'a dark room' is and how simplistic it is. That is not only it's greatest strength, but also it's greatest flaw.

    Don't get me wrong, I grew up in the age of Pong, Zork and online Telnet games known as MUDs.

    But there's a huge difference between these games and a dark room.

    While games like Zork had an ever progressing storyline, much like reading a book, a dark room's narration is few and far between and often times incredibly vague.

    While MUDs offered big worlds to explore, dozens if not hundreds of monsters to slay and piles of loot and gold to collect, a dark room is incredibly isolated, often punishing players for exploring. The game largely revolves around resource grinding, so you'll spend a lot of time just watching your screen until you have enough resources to progress.

    Eventually when you finally get to the real meat and bones of the game, it's mostly anticlimactic. You will spend most of your time going from place to place to collect more resources until you have what you need to progress.

    I believe a lot of the praise for this game is largely undeserved. The current game industry is in strange state right now where people are responding strongly to games that feature very little. As it is, a dark room brings nothing new to the table and offers very little as far as gameplay mechanics are concerned.

    A dark room is slow, tedious, boring and largely non-interactive. If you enjoy grinding for resources and doing little else besides looking at your screen, this game is for you, everyone else avoid at all costs. There is a reason this game only costs a dollar.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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No score yet - based on 3 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. TouchArcade
    Jun 3, 2014
    80
    It's a strange little thing, to be sure, but I'd definitely recommend A Dark Room to people who appreciate off-beat RPGs, fans of experience-driven games, or really anyone looking for something a little bit different from usual.
    Read full review
  2. Slide to Play
    May 6, 2014
    75
    It may not seem like much at first, but if you stick around long enough, it’s easy to fall under A Dark Room’s spell.
    Read full review
  3. 148Apps
    Mar 31, 2014
    60
    A Dark Room may have plenty of longevity and may be genuinely intriguing, but its interface feels undeveloped in its iOS iteration.
    Read full review