A Dark Room is an odd game that many people have found unexpectedly addictive. On the surface, it looks like an e-book where you select a few options and progress the story. However, there is a little more to it. You start with just a fire that you have to stoke, and then a stranger enters. Before you know it, you are outside collecting wood, making traps and building carts.
When you first play, the game will seem to have a very linear story progression. After all, you cannot choose to stop stoking the fire, nor can you choose to not make an animal trap because the game will not progress if you refuse. Yet, over time, you are given more options and the story starts to branch out a little. It is a very unusual game with a certain unexpected charm that isn’t immediately apparent from its outward appearance.
Games Similar To Dark Room
We have tried to avoid the simplest of games that were made on Twine, but we threw one in for good measure (it being Tower of the Blood Lord). Games such as Candy Box, Space Lich Omega and The Gold Factory are actually as good as Dark Room, but they are good in a slightly different way. It is fair to say that few games are able to recreate the atmospheric feeling that Dark Room generates. If you are genuinely a fan of text-based games, then some of these titles will hit the spot.
Candy Box
The game revolves around confectionary. You receive a candy at a rate of one per second, and you may eat the candy to replenish your HP or use it to buy things. There is very little to do at first, but over time you are given more options. It turns into a resource management game where you may take up quests and kill monsters in order to gain more candy. Leaving the game idle will allow you to collect more candy so that you may buy things such as a copper sword.
Anti-Idle
Anti-Idle is not for everybody. It looks like it was created and drawn by a child, and the developer’s choice to overuse color is baffling. (To be fair, drawing a good user interface can be a tedious task.) The aim of the game is to feed a dragon and level up. There are active and passive ways of leveling up. Collect coins over time and buy licenses, cards and items that allow you to collect coins or other items at a faster rate. For example, you may buy a fishing license which slowly generates coins in addition to whichever other passive and active ways you are collecting coins. It doesn’t have the charm or depth that Dark Room has, but it is more complex and there is much more to do.
Lifeline
Lifeline is an interactive story that is told over several days, which is another way of saying that this game is going to drag things out and make you wait in order to complete it. Does this add to the gameplay experience? You may feel like you have done and experienced more by completing the game because you may feel like you earned it more. You control what an astronaut does on a distant moon by convincing him to do as you say. For IOS and Android
The Ensign
The Ensign is commonly referred to as a prequel to Dark Room and it has the same level of mystery, but it doesn’t have the same level of depth. Just in case you have not played through Dark Room yet, I cannot mention what happens in The Ensign, suffice it to say that you should play Dark Room before playing this.
Space Lich Omega
Gather resources and venture deep into the labyrinths of a church in order to battle demons. Just like when you stoke the fire with A Dark Room, you may also repeatedly click the gold button to receive gold that you use to buy different upgrades and so forth. There is more opportunity to gain a passive income with Space Lich Omega, especially compared to the earlier stages of Dark Room. However, there is less focus on resource management, which may be a positive for some people. One of the elements you may enjoy are the one-off decisions that you may make that directly affect your stats.
Tower of the Blood Lord
Tower of the Blood Lord was written and created by a person who was writing about his first twenty minutes playing Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The text-based game is a little like playing a computer game. You even have to choose buttons to press that correspond to actions you may take in a computer game, such as pressing A, B, X and Y. The game has about as much depth as a mouse’s ear and probably as much content. Nevertheless, if you want to recreate the joy of playing Call Of Duty via a text-based interface, then try Tower of the Blood Lord.
Candy Box 2
It seems to be even more beloved than the first Candy Box and is definitely worth a try if you liked the first one.
The Gold Factory
It was inspired by Dark Room and Candy Box, and it actually mixes elements of both to create something worth playing.
Choice Of Robots
There is no resource management, just a story and a series of selectable choices that affect how the story turns out.
Kingdom Of Loathing
A turn-based web browser game that also supports a multiplayer mode.
The Invisible Dragons
A sleek looking text-based game that has a reasonably balanced resource-management focus. For IOS and Apple Watch
