A Dark Room: Will test your Patience

I came across a Dark Room from a Kill Ten Rats article and decided to try it out one night, seeing that it's free for anyone to play. What starts out as a one button text adventure soon grows into a resource management and eventually into an adventure game. An interesting one involving aliens and spaceships which is a pretty big leap from starting a fire in the eponymous dark room. While I do agree with Ravious that the developer does some interesting tricks as the game progresses it isn't without its problems.

This is way too much graphics, hence it isn't in the game.

Obviously as a text adventure there are no sounds and no pictures (though later you do get an ASCII adventuring map) which can be a downer depending on your mood but what really killed it for me is the grinding. Grinding in its purest form: click button. Wait to click button. Repeat. The amount of resources you need is near ludicrous. It may be understandable in the building phase but when you need 100 units of wood (the same amount required to make your first hut) to make a single spear you know that someone is just jerking your chain.

Zubon's comment on the Kill Ten Rats post puts it most elegantly: " I feel like I spent most of the game waiting to play the game." That's the same thing I felt, and it isn't a good feeling. To that end, and because I like pictures and music, I rate it one alien skull out of five. Still worth a try yourself, even if it's just to see the minimalist creativity at work. It just wasn't my cup of tea.