Tag: A Dark Room »

Burly Men at Sea is out today and it looks a treat. It tells the tale of three Scandinavian fishermen who leave the humdrum of their daily lives to go exploring. It’s a beautiful folksy story that unfurls as you interact with the environment until the adventure ends and you set off down one of the game’s other many altering paths.

If you enjoyed the beardy fishermen’s atmospheric adventures, perhaps you’d like to do some more exploring. Here are our recommendations for some of mobile’s finest exploration-heavy games.

Amirali Rajan'sThe Ensign is the prequel to the text-based adventure A Dark Room, and it's gone free for a couple of days.

A Dark Room was something of an enigma when it first appeared on the App Store - it still is in a way. Here's this text-only game that starts out with nothing but a fire that needs to be stoked in order to keep you warm, that then expands into an unexpectedly large (and depressing) adventure. And now a prequel called The Ensign is on its way to the App Store. Time to get excited!

The Ensign will shed some light on the events that took place before A Dark Room - possibly explaining just what happened to the world to make it so inhospitable - but it's not the same type of game. A Dark Room had you delegating tasks to other survivors and expanding your base of operations while simultaneously exploring the wasteland. The Ensign will focus much more on the exploration side of things. Perks will be replaced with artifacts that can enhance your abilities, there will be new dungeons that won't simply funnel you in a single direction, weapons will break if you aren't careful, and a new (presumably horrible) enemy will stalk you all over the map.

Another key difference is that The Ensign is being designed to be extremely difficult. You will die a lot, but the idea is for you to learn from each death so that you can progress a little further each time. It's also meant to be highly-replayable, which is good since that's exactly what you're going to be doing a lot - because you'll probably die all the time.

The Ensign is still in beta, but we'll definitely keep you updated as we learn more about the release date and price.

A Dark Room may not be much to look at, but behind the simple menus and walls of text is an unexpectedly involved (and super-bleak) adventure. And from now until Monday morning (8/4), it's totally free.

If you've been holding off on checking out A Dark Room for whatever reason, well then now is the time to fix that. Regardless of how off-putting the lack of graphics may or may not be, it's a free download. And "as grandpa Alfonse always said, 'anything free is worth saving up for.'"

You can (and should) grab A Dark Room off the App Store now for free.

A Dark Room certainly ranks as one of the more unique games that I have ever played. Part of the magic of this game is that, because of the lack of any discernible tutorial, there is a very realistic sense that the character does not know what to do and is trying their best to keep their growing community going. Because of all that there really is a need for some guidance for those playing through the first time, or even those just looking for a more efficient route when booting the game up for the second or third time. That's what I'll attempt to do here, starting of course with waking up in a dark room.

[Note: We've tried to avoid spoilers as best we can, but even the emergent gameplay in A Dark Room could be considered spoiler territory to some. If you haven't played the game before and would rather feel your way through the first time, we advise that you hold off on reading this guide until your second attempt.]