What is Reddit's opinion of
A Dark Room?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
I was absolutely addicted to A Dark Room. Don't look up any FAQs or hints or anything. Just roll with it and discover every part of the game yourself. It's a unique gaming experience you can only do once.
Edit: If that's not your style, try out CandyBox
Edit 2: Also, here's an unique RPG that's stripped down to just numbers.
Edit 3: Posting about A Dark Room got me addicted again. I also just found the "lights off" button in the lower left. So pretty, it's easy on the eyes.
I built a little web game called A Dark Room and put it out on the internet for free. I've received a few hundred dollars in donations, which is pretty cool.
Another developer contacted me to build an iOS version, which I agreed to, and it's making some decent cash at $0.99 a download. So yeah, I'd say that's "real money." Maybe not enough to quit my job over, but certainly not nothing.
Edit:
If you're interested, Amir has written an epic about the development (and aftermath) of A Dark Room iOS.
I play online games, preferably multiplayer ones (or at least single player with a really good story or mechanic) to get lost in. If you would like a suggestion as you are currently bored, here are my current jams:
<strong>Initium</strong> has been described as the text-based lovechild of Dark Souls and Diablo 2 that you can play on your phone or PC. The beauty in this one is the adrenaline fueled situations generated and interesting mechanics in this roguelike fantasy universe, which features a 100% player driven economy, player housing, and player-made zones. This feels like the good old 80s MUDs, and has caused me more adrenaline fueled moments than modern shooters. There is a real, lasting sense of camaraderie, friendship and overcoming insurmountable challenges (such as one-off world-wide dynamic boss events) with the other players in here too. Again, modern games tend to lose the personal aspect, whereas in here you can choose to be known to everyone and have a very active social life in-game, or be a sneaky assassin no-one has ever heard of.
<strong>A Dark Room</strong> is an RPG where you can expect the unexpected. You wake up in a dark room, and start lighting a fire. Then a girl walks in, weary, tired and cold to warm herself by your fire. From there, things get complex. If you want to give it a shot, DO NOT look up anything about the game, as it has zero replay value and the beauty is in finding the game out for yourself. Think along the lines of <strong>Frog Fractions</strong> in terms of twists, but less whacky and with far more substance. This takes about 3 hours of your time to clock if you have some time-management skills. To confirm, this is NOT a horror, has NO jumpscares, etc. The title is a little misleading in that regard.
A Dark Room. Free, browser based (no downloads), will take you 3 or 4 hours to clock, and will constantly surprise you.
The game opens with you sitting in a dark room, with an extinguished fire and a little firewood. As you start to rekindle the fire, a girl walks in and begins to warm herself by the fire you made. From there, things get interesting.
DO NOT look up anything about the game. It can only be played once to any effect. Also, there are no jump scares. =)
EDIT: For those asking for a multiplayer game with a Dark Room style, try Initium. It's a MUD RPG, meaning to say a text based game with some graphics and a button interface. You could describe it as a lovechild between Diablo and Dark Souls.
Frog Fractions and A Dark Room basically invented a new genre called unfolding games
If you liked this one, I would also suggest A Dark Room and Crank. Both have similar 'paradigm shift' mechanics and incremental/idle gameplay.
Also plug for /r/incremental_games
Thanks! I've been playing a game on my phone recently called "A Dark Room." It starts with you just in a hut in a forest and building a fire. This is how I imagine it when I'm playing. You should check it out!
Because gameplay makes the game; not good graphics. And platformers are one of the purest forms of gameplay.
Do you cringe when you see this too? a dark room
Oh wow! Didn't know this was on the Switch.
Very easy to lose hours in this game. You can play it for free, but for $1 it's more than worth picking it up.
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/mobileWarning.html
Seems to be $1 in the play store too, if you're into that. Neat, thanks OP!
A dark room. very simple concept but enjoyable and easy to immerse yourself in. http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Also, unrelated, but can anyone explain how the hell you embed links into words?
Theres a nice little community thats sprouted up around the genre. Its as valid as anything else really.
Listen, I get it, on paper they sound kinda stupid. Try A Dark Room. Its interesting and addicting, yet it has the same base mechanics Im talking about. Im a hardcore gamer, but I can enjoy these casual games too.
Or try Cookie Clicker. A Dark Room and Cookie Clicker are the stand outs from this genre, if you cant enjoy them, then its probably not for you.
Might enjoy A Dark Room, then. It's broswer game without all the clicking.
I suggest having these play in the background:
Watch the Primitive Technology channel on youtube. The guy doesn't say a word, so the videos are quiet, introspective and relaxing. And really interesting, nonetheless.
Play A Dark Room (with the "lights off" options on, of course) while listening to rain sounds
If i'm feeling more adventurous, look for threads about mysteries on askreddit and read the weird, scary stuff. Or maybe venture into r/unresolvedmysteries.
Play retro videogames, the ones that don't have fast-paced gameplay, complicated mechanics or detailed graphics, such as Age of Wonders 1, Roller Coaster Tycoon, maybe even some Pokemon.
Sometimes I watch a documentary on netflix, wildlife is really soothing. Sometimes a neo-noir movie, like Drive or Nightcrawler, to get into full night mood.
I'm assuming that's because cookie clicker is inspired by other previous idle games like A Dark Room or Candy box which would reveal gameplay elements slowly.
That's also why you can't see all buildings the moment you start a run.
The fact that this existed before the app never seems to be mentioned.
I saw the web version reviewed in RPS or something similar and thats what made me buy the iOS app. Without the web version I don't think you would have received any significant sales.
It starts as a very simple clicker. Then it becomes some sort of economy management. Then it becomes a sort of adventure/exploration game. Each one of these stages plays completely different than the other.
I wonder why the previous commenter gave you such a convoluted explanation when he could just toss in an example.
I personally try and stay away from incremental games. Not because they're bad, in fact I love them. However, I know that feeling of having a whole day go by because of these games haha. Loved cookie clicker myself. There was another game about you being in a room where you had to stock a fire and more things happened after a while. That was good to. and the lollipop farm one. and then- you know what? I'm just gonna stop here before I love another week of my time :)
edit: It's called A Dark Room
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ - top notch game
Would really like to see multiple phases, preferably with big gameplay/mechanic changes. A Dark Room goes from a purely text clicker to an ascii rogue-like to another style (spoilers!)
Resources should probably be dgg meme related: could be farming emotes, could be farming twitch viewers.
Good luck bois!
The content and non-sequitur, nearly dadaist humor is extremely hit or miss, but I think it's held in high regard because it's one of the earliest "unfolding" games.
A Dark Room is much more thematically coherent and I think it uses its new mechanics and handles its discoveries very well to deliver its unfolding narrative.
I'm personally still a pretty big fan of the idea, but I do wish it would evolve outside of lo-fi, low-effort, retro-style curios.
Will you be running a world with maps and tiles and entities in the background, and just showing that through a different interface? Or are you planning to do something altogether?
Your description immediately reminds me of A Dark Room. Although in a later phase of the game there is a navigable game world, the bulk of the game is played through buttons and event logs. Check it out here for some inspiration if you didn't know it already: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com
In any case, it seems like your basic need is easily building UI's. Maybe you could start out with some native Python UI library (https://wiki.python.org/moin/GuiProgramming) or maybe even create prototype as a browser game HTML and JavaScript (or React...) if you're comfortable writing that.
I like A Dark Room
It's does have a nonincremental segment (and an ending!), but the main gameplay loop is in the same vein of using resources to upgrade stuff that generates more resources
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ This game is called A Dark Room. It's a game you can play on your browser. A Dark Room is text based game that starts with you collecting resources and leads to you exploring the land around you and using your resources to upgrade your gear allowing to explore even further. This game also has a prequel called The Ensign
[Antimatter Dimensions](ivark.github.io) A Dark Room [Trimps](trimps.github.io) Paperclips Mine Defense
Keep up with your inventory! I've been playing off and on for years, mainly HC ascensions, and the amount of crap in my inventory is insane.
But to answer your actual question, right now the other browser games I've been playing are Candy Box & A Dark Room. I've also been playing a ton of Rogue Legacy (not a browser game) lately... it's the perfect platformer for people like me who are TERRIBLE at platformers.
This is not the original version of the game, it's a github spinoff. (The game is open source, but the original version is here.) The game also has a subreddit, /r/adarkroom.
Also, isn't there a rule about no webgames on this subreddit?
A Dark Room (free browser game)
King of Dragon Pass
There's also the Choice of Games games. Never played any personally but they seem interesting.
I'm 19 and I really like idle/incremental games. Not so much anymore, but when I was like 15-16 I'd spend hours on Anti-idle the game, as well as Swarm Simulator. It might seem like a stupid, not fun thing to do, and a terrible idea for a game. But I believe those are great games that deserve recognition. So I believe tycoons are popular because it's a legitimately good concept. And no, I don't think that all idle games are evil skinner boxes.
Sure, many (most?) tycoons are really cheap cash grabs made by people just starting to make games because they're easy to make. But if the core gameplay is good and you haven't already played the core gameplay to death, then why care that it's just a terrible spongebob reskin of the same old threadmill? Many video game franchises are successful despite being just that.
Saying that tycoons are bad because they're overdone may not be entirely unfair. I'm just suggesting that maybe those who still enjoy them see them in a fresher light, untainted by past experiences? This might also explain why they are more popular with younger kids (is that even the case?)
Here's a recommendation for people just starting off: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Believe it or not, it's got fun gameplay and a good story. Just give it a chance beyond the first few events. It has great pacing, and is not very long. I'd not even say that the gameplay is repetitive. Just play it while surfing Reddit or whatever.
oh sweet lord. Stay away from that game if you are susceptible to addiction. There was a time that I couldn't stop playing this. It must be something about tapping into our primitive memories and reward mechanisms.
EDIT: If you have time to spare, try A dark room too.
A Dark Room
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
It's absolutely a grind, so much so that I left the browser open and went to work to let my resources build up, but it really is an incredible experience and one of my top games of 2013 period.
Cookie Clicker is kind of the current gold standard as it's purely about the incrementing numbers, and Candy Box is a good one that introduced me to this sort of game.
My personal favorite is A Dark Room, which takes a much more serious approach to the genre.
Galaxia - super fun imho, takes about 30m to 1h http://www.templegatesgames.com/galaxia/Game.html
InfiRoad - another fast one. Its infinite, but I consider it done when Im progressing so fast that there is no end in sight. First time playing it will take you a while to finish, but still less than a week. Once you know which hero to focus on and what items to upgrade its easy to just have it progress thousands of stages in seconds. https://www.houmotsuko.net/game/infiroad/index
A dark Room - took me about a week if i remember correctly. good fun, good story imho http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Only a little tongue in cheek with this response:
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
It's a cookie clicker but you need to explore the countryside to expand your resources. So it's got a bit of an adventure mode to it.
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Una specie di gioco di ruolo dove parti accendendo un fuoco in una piccola stanza e man mano che succedono cose, crei il tuo villaggio.
L'interfaccia è solo testo in bianco e nero, non dovrebbe crearti problemi.
<strong>A Dark Room</strong> is an RPG where you can expect the unexpected. You wake up in a dark room, and start lighting a fire. Then a girl walks in, weary, tired and cold to warm herself by your fire. From there, things get complex. If you want to give it a shot, DO NOT look up anything about the game, as it has zero replay value and the beauty is in finding the game out for yourself. Think along the lines of <strong>Frog Fractions</strong> in terms of twists, but less whacky and with far more substance. This takes about 3 hours of your time to clock if you have some time-management skills. To confirm, this is NOT a horror, has NO jumpscares, etc. The title is a little misleading in that regard.
Here's an incremental RPG that you might enjoy called A Dark Room. I lost almost a whole day to it. Not much re-playability per se, but still a fun game nonetheless.
P.S. I reccomend using the 'lights off' version.
> I know the basics of HTML and JavaScrpt and have programmed my own 2D-shooter in the past.
That should be easily enough. (Check out A dark room ...)
With a bit of VBA, excel would actually do a good job here, too.
Simply write a program that runs in a loop. Either once per click or interval, work through your values. (Or let it produce charts, if you want to be less realtime/interactive)
Start with a form to set your values: How much wood ~~would a woochuck chuck...~~ is produced per lumberjack? How much stone is produced per quarry? How many of each do you have?
How much stone, iron and wood does the blacksmith need?
So, with each click, increase your resources, from top to bottom:
Each Lumberjack produces n wood.
Each blacksmith uses up x wood, y iron and z stone, produces o swords.
Have a distribution key, i.e. how do you deal with a situation where you want to use more resources than you have?
see what happens ...
-(A Dark Room)[http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/] - Sort of like Universal Paperclips in a few ways, it is less addicting and is another good incremental game.
-(Papers, Please)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papers%2C_Please] - A game where you are an immigration officer, checking papers and deciding who to let in and who to send away.
I know that feeling of just wanting to relax while playing, but I don't play games like that to achieve that.
Instead, I play for example something like Shining Force. A turn-based strategy RPG that's very simple, doesn't have permadeath, doesn't need you to distribute skill points or anything, so no way to mess up your build, and allows you to escape any battle instantly without losing EXP or Gold.
Though if you want a relaxing browser game, I guess you could try: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Or the grow games: http://www.eyezmaze.com/
Not to take anything away from the mobile version, but just so everyone who may be interested is aware, you can play it here online for free.
I've killed many a slow workday afternoon stoking my fire.
A Dark Room. Text based, addictive, can email a passcode to you self to resume on another browser or just continue on in your original browser. Worth a play even if it's not what you were looking for.
I have been playing pretty much exclusively good games with bad graphics lately. It forces the creators to make the game shine in some more interesting way. Currently jamming these two:
A Dark Room is a text RPG, where you can expect the unexpected. You wake up in a dark room, and start lighting a fire, and from there things get complex. If you want to give it a shot, DO NOT look up anything about the game, as it has zero replay value and the beauty is in finding the game out for yourself. Think along the lines of Frog Fractions.
Initium has a few more graphics than A Dark Room, but still practically zilch. The beauty in this one is the intensity generated in this roguelike fantasy universe, where everything from the environment to some other players want to kill you as you, and every adventure/fight has you on the edge of your seat. 100% player driven economy, player housing, and player-made zones. This feels like the good old 80s MUDs.
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ kept me entertained for a few hours while doing other stuff, it starts off slow but it gets more involved as you progress. If nothing else I found it to be a pretty unique and relaxing experience.
I love them and hate them. They're evil games that suck up all your free time, but they're so addictive and I always get sucked in.
Clickers I'd recommend playing/avoiding:
Time Clickers: http://store.steampowered.com/app/385770/
Save The Earth: http://gamejolt.com/games/save-the-earth-the-incrementai/41678
But for a game that starts of as an incremental clicker and turns into something awesome and truly worthwhile, I'd really recommend The Dark Room: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
If you want almost no graphics, A Dark Room ( http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ ) is pretty cool, or any text adventure, really... Zork if you want a classic. I believe you can download the source code for A Dark Room from its GitHub ( https://github.com/doublespeakgames/adarkroom ) if you want to play offline in browser.
There are a lot of comparisons to be made (aesthetically it's kind of like Brogue tiles; Dwarf Fortress is an obvious gameplay/depth comparison).
But it strongly reminds me of <em>A Dark Room</em> in the following way. POTENTIAL SPOILERS:
You start with this sense that everything is low tech. But as you keep discovering the game you slowly realize it's post apocalyptic and there's actually highly advanced technology that you have access to. It's a very neat feeling in CoQ to examine a 'milky tube' and it turns out to be a high powered rifle or something.
Diverging from games: Mad Max. Obviously Qud is based on Gamma World, but knowing nothing about that game I feel I'm in a Mad Max type world where water is so precious it's basically the currency.
Candy Box series is my favorite
Note: you have to have the tab open to make progress. It does have save functionality, but it doesn't do stuff in the cloud. You actually benefit from not playing for a period of time because that is how you build resources.
Similar to that is http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com
If you haven't played Cookie Clicker, look that up as well. It also requires you keep your tab open though.
Someone else mentioned Neptunes Pride and I second that.
If you don't mind playing on a mobile device, you can play the game Uniwar which is a turn based strategy game where you can set turn length to be 48 (or 72) hours. This would let you only check in once a day to play turns. There are many other games like this. Chess is widely available in this format.
Hmmm....the most recent browser based text game that I really liked was A Dark Room. It's pretty cool. Though I can't remember for the life of me when it came out. Might have been the past year, might have been longer.
It may be a bit of a strange suggestion, but take a look at A dark room.
It's a very lean mix between adventure, strategy and roguelike. It can be played casually and requires little reflexes. The story is minimal but engrossing, and it's easy to get absorbed in it if you give it a try.
Despite the minimalism, the environment is fleshed out, and unfolds bit by bit, in a controlled and carefully crafted way, with some "ah, so that's how it happened!" moments.
It's minimalistic and casual, but give it a try.
Sorry to hear that! My beforecast has been rain and chill, but maybe these will do something for you:
http://search.earthcam.com/search/ft_search.php?_sbox=1&s1=1&term=beach
http://www.google.com/search?q=finland+landscape+summer&tbm=isch
Or you could simulate a cozy cabin! (Give it a little time, and it'll develop into so much more):
Hey guys.
I am fairly familiar with big engines like Unity3d (making my current game on it) and UE4. But for my next project I am considering some smaller engine. Can you guys suggest me something?
The game I am planning to make is somewhat similar to adarkroom, but with more sophisticated graphics.
Basically I need an engine that will handle UI with grace. Ideally it should have particle editor at least similar to Shuriken (unity). It should be multiplatform and must handle Android and iOS.
I could use Unity2d, but it seems like overkill for this kind of game. Also Unity Free has a number of limitations I don't want to deal with at this point.
Thanks!
P.S. I am not a programmer, I merely am gathering information on which engines could suit the project.
Yeah I'm not sure why people are piling on Javascript like this, it's actually a really good language. It has all sorts of features that people brag about, say, Python or Ruby having, but it's supported literally everywhere with a browser and you can deliver Javascript based content off of a static web page - just look at all those little games like Candy Box, Bead Machine, or A Dark Room.
The only part where it gets hairy is when you need to interact with the DOM, but that's what libraries are for.
Maybe it's because it's hard to set up a decent IDE for the language? I dunno.
You're probably aware of A Dark Room, which you should likely take cues from: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Another case of slower/enjoyable gameplay is /r/kittensgame
Game link: http://bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/#
When progression is slow the hook isn't as immediately compelling. Because of this, when the pacing is slower the game needs to have stronger other incentives to play - being pretty, funny, thematically strong, etc. Fast numerical inflation for longer games is rarely a lasting answer. Instead, having progression along multiple vectors can help elongate gameplay - that way each upgrade can be meaningful.
I was going to write in more detail but I got derailed by splitting a 60oz Margarita and I don't care enough right now to concentrate that hard.
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
a dark room. a semi-idle game that's based around exploration and building. it has a pretty good story, even if it's hidden and you have to figure it out through dialogue, item descriptions, ect.
You can always make a game like:
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
It was even #1 at US apple appstore, means it didn't actually bite the dust, but did quite well in fact.
But forget about your "bible". Nobody will read it, nobody cares. There are a lot of writers with industry experience and successful projects, and they have plenty of ideas and "bibles" in their sleeves.
Zork 1 by Infocom and other UNIX based games from the 80s were sold commercially (back then). A Dark room is a simple but good game made in 2013.
Here are some more : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text-based_computer_games
Pretty much agreed. Building the engine from scratch is immensely satisfying and productive as a learning exercise, but if your goal is just to produce a game, you're going to be spending a LOOOOT of time coding nuts-and-bolts stuff that other people have already worked out. If you want a text-based game, look into Inform 7.
There's also the problem of distribution. You can "freeze" a Python program into a distributable and send it around, but who's gonna want to install a distributable made by some guy in this day and age? (Plus the freezing process is not super efficient, winds up packaging the language and runtime environment and a bunch of necessary libraries together, so even a relatively simple program can take up like 800 MB). Much better to just learn JavaScript (which these days is *extremely* Python-like) and program a browser-based game, like this one.
Depends entirely on what you find relaxing, but here are some options~
Kirby's Epic Yarn (I played it on the Wii and it has the best soundtrack and very darling graphics)
Plants VS Zombies (I know there are multiple versions of it now- I really only know the original on PC. It was fun and relatively slow paced for a kind of "tower defense" game)
Stardew Valley (It's on multiple platforms. I've only played PC. It is hands down the most charming game and is as laid back as you want to play.)
RollerCoaster Tycoon (PC again. I know there are other versions. I've only played the first one. But if you like management games, this is worth checking out.)
A Dark Room (PC and it is a text based browser game. It starts out very simple, but the longer you play, the more you'll discover.
Piano Tiles (I play this on my phone. I wasn't sure whether to include it or not, but I find it very relaxing!)
Pokedex, Reddit, Hacker News are all fairly beginner-friendly, real-life-ish projects that require fetching data from existing APIs.
Implementing a game similar to A Dark Room is also pretty fun. I did one as a test-bed when I implemented mithril.js, a react-like framework, a few years ago.
> Could you give me an example where a major logic component for an application would be written in the front-end javascript?
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
> Why would anyone with a more advanced grasp of logic be willing to take a pay-cut as a front-end developer when they could do 99% the same work and make twice the salary as a full-stack/back-end developer?
Jobs aren't paid based on the title, but on the skills and tasks that come with the job. There is no law that says that anyone who is called a front-end developer needs to earn less than everybody that is called a back-end developer.
And there just isn't much of a difference in skill-set between people that do pure-JS-front-end and pure-JS-back-end. At least not when compared to all the possibilities that all of programming has to offer.
Finally reached a milestone of mine in Prison Architect (multi security prison with death row with a low repeat offender rating), and just finished A Dark Room for the first time. Going to give Terraria another chance to impress me before I drop it.
A Dark Room. It's a purely text-based, mysterious but very simple game that slowly becomes much more. You start knowing nothing about the game, but you figure things out quickly. Great way to pass the time if you're bored, definitely one of my favorite games. Never played another game like it.
For desktop users, there's also a web-based version! Enjoy. http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Good luck with your surgery!! I'm sure it'll go great :)
Okay so this isn't a very funny distraction, but man is it distracting: A Dark Room. Such a great game to have going in the background and it does make you think and plan!
Cookie Clicker is a similar vein as well!
On top of those, "A Dark Room" is the best idle in-browser game I've ever played.
It starts super simple, but it turns into this massive game and it's a blast to play. There's imagery, a captivating story, and rewarding progress. I can't tell you much about the gameplay, you'll have to trust me on this one and give it a try.
Factorio, very unique, definitely look at that one if you haven't!
Starbound, with the mod Fracking Universe. So many things to craft.
If you want to play something in your browser:
Candybox2
A Dark Room
Dont judge them by the first look. They are the sort of games that grow and unlock as you play. Discovery is a lot of the fun in them.
Not exactly what you are looking for but maybe it can be a nice time waster until you find something more appropriate.
A Dark Room http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
Don't let the begging of the game fool you.
Other than that, I would probably go for some roguelike without tiles. brogue it relatively tame with it's graphics. http://brogue.roguelikelike.com/
The Horse remind me so much of Candybox. Unfortunately they shut down the servers and you can't save your game anymore. :( sad days
Candy box is also kind of like Cookie clicker or A dark room
Have fun kissing your night goodbye!
Heyy, that looks nice! after playing A Dark Room, I realize that columned layout is the way to go with these things, but as I'm sure you noticed i gave absolutely zer0 fucks about the Style. The layout of buttons was subject to change so I didn't even try to style it before it was working.
That sounds really interesting!
The game A Dark Room has a similar mechanic to this, though you have to play through some section of the game before this unlocks. They have a blank grid map with things to find, and each step through the map uses up food and water, where if you run out of either, you pass out and end up at the outset again.
My usual advice for travel is:
Turn up the realism and resource-management, and focus on the monotonous downtime
Use geography (huge mesas, trenches and canyons) to force the players to make navigation decisions
Put down monster encounters as well as NPC encounters, and give the players information about where these things are
I've talked more about these points and why I think they're important here and here.
Maybe you could build up the location of the city by giving them a blank grid map, and giving them information like "It's east from the oasis" or "It's definitely less than 5 days walk from the town".
A lot of the tension of a party-vs-environment section is in the desperation of it. How much can you carry? What do you have to leave behind? What will you need? Have you doomed yourself by your decisions? By giving the players as much of that responsibility as you can, you subtly remove their assurance that the DM is in charge of whether they live or die. Give them more equipment than they can carry and make them choose what to keep, when they have to start walking.
You could also include a band of raiding orcs/Thri-Keen that are always on the map and to be avoided. The players can get information about their last known location and plan their trips based on that.
Zombies.
All the mundanity of The Walking Dead, with the advantage that you can feed annoying characters to the hordes of the undead.
I often thought about making a game that took Animal Crossing and merged it with A Dark Room. Imagine how gutted you've be to take a week off and not find weeds, but that Biskit has been torn apart by wolves due to your lack of activity.
But I'm too lazy and get bogged down with details.
Never goes wrong to just have a town in the middle of nowhere. Have some 'interesting' locations and nothing else. A lake, a forest, a ruin.
As the campaign expands you can start adding cool stuff that the players decide to invest into. Example: If one is a cleric is there an abandoned temple somewhere they can restore? Or if there's someone with a sailor background maybe there's a treasure island out there?
If you need some idea of how this expands try this small game: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
This is probably not necessarily what you're looking for, but this browser-based game, while appearing simple at first, is definitely worth a few hours' investment.
No problem! If you're looking for something to do for extra immersion in the rain sounds, I recommend playing <u>A Dark Room</u>. It's a little slow at least to begin with, but it's pretty good, and people seemed to like it when I originally suggested the pairing of the noise generator to the game, here.
A game can be "click button". remember
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
http://clickingbad.nullism.com/
and many more simple "click button" games. I am not even talking ogame legend and many more browser games. You should understand that a game can be just "text" but the design makes it playable/enjoyable.
Alright team, I played No Man's Sky last night. Did I like it? ... No. Tbh, the scale of it works against it. There's so many planets and stuff, but it seems like you don't need to go to most of them anyway. And the main point of the game seems to be 'land on planet, craft warp drive, warp one step closer to goal, repeat to infinity.' Most of the planets we found were boring, with little to no animal life. And they don't have different environments on each planet- you land on one and walk around 50m or so and you've seen everything on the planet. Plus the planets are so huge but you run SO SLOW.
The one thing I liked was the writing- first person narrative, a little creepy, a little unsettling. If you like that kind of writing I highly recommend A Dark Room which you can play in your browser.
Overall- 1 out of 5 stars, would not recommend to a friend. Also fuck the inventory capacity.
Your explanation of how gameplay-bothers work as soft constraints makes sense but I don't think it is a plausible explanation for why these mechanics are used. From a design perspective, why not use constraints that don't mildly annoy people?
I think it's far more likely that videogames are not dominated by gameplay-design considerations alone. Tedious mechanics are often grandfathered in or else provide some non-gameplay related benefit.
For example, I think Bethesda is famous for making virtual worlds not super fun games. Worlds have consistent rules, they don't curate an experience they provide a playground to interact with and to explore. There is no in world explanation for why players can pick up legendary weapons and not teapots so Bethesda let's them pick up both to preserve immersion.
As for Factorio, I think that is something totally different. As an incremental game it is designed to provide engagement by providing a sense of progression. I don't think the crafting is intentionally boring I just think it is not the focus of the game and so no effort was put into making it particularly fun. In incremental games the engagement comes from waiting for something to happen and feeling satisfaction when that thing finally happens. A dark room is a fantastic illustration of this principle.
Edit: I do think collecting, sorting and inventory optimization are fun for some people. I'm never skeptical of what people enjoy but I'm often skeptical of their explanation of why they enjoy things. In the case of games like Skyrim I'm sure some of the fun does come from collecting but I suspect the biggest benefit of being able to pick anything up is immersion.
Currently, it would be Impossible Journey. It's a sort of half platformer where your character moves automatically and you simply have to time the jumps correctly. It's pretty fun, though at this point all I have left to do is grind for the last costume.
All time, without a doubt, is A Dark Room. It's this really interesting little gem that combines about three different genres of gameplay and uses its minimalist graphics to tell a pretty clever story. Seriously, this is one of those things I recommend to pretty much anyone who'll listen. If you don't have iOS, I suggest at least checking out the original web version. ~~It will change your life.~~ No, it won't, but it is good.
Perhaps not quite what you're looking for, but check out /r/incremental_games. There are a lot of browser-based games like A Dark Room that should hold your attention for awhile.
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
This game. Don't read up anything on it. Just play it. Took me a half a day to complete. I had no idea what's going on for half of it. You wake up in a dark room and it's cold.
Okay, I know there are some games out there that are easier (not easy, but easier) ex: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ Such as text-adventures and things that use RPG Maker. I know it helps to have a portfolio, people like Dan Harmon who does production for TV recommended just to create. But yeah honestly thats a question I have too, what are some entry-levels-positions?
I'm curious what other people add...
All of Jmtb02's games are great (You can find them on Kongregate or Armor games). Doublespeak also has unique browser games like A Dark Room and Gridland. Oh, and Kupo707's EBF series is highly recommended (Especially the 3rd and 4th).
Redditing..
using subreddits like /r/askreddit, /r/gifs, /r/funny, /r/pokemon, /r/nuzlocke, /r/gaming, look at lore of games I play.. Or there's cookie clicker and a dark room
Two of my favorite incrementals, A dark room and Candy box don't require lots of clicking.
On another note Adventure capitalist did a very good job getting rid of clicking, although I don't know if I would consider it having too much "management".
I step away, like you do. I work out (weights, cardio) to get rid of stress. Writing is good as is watching plenty of cat/puppy vids. Playing video games works too :) All to help you re-focus.
Current cool game here
This sounds like a good basis for an Incremental Game. If you haven't played A Dark Room, try it. Give it a while, as it's slow to start and you won't get the full effect immediately, much like the depth of yours is hidden at first.
Atualmente eu estou jogando o hexa clicker, mas é bem chatinho, um que eu eu gastei horas é Kittens Game este é daquele estilo de criar uma civilização tipo o A Dark Room, mas são mais antigos, dos novos eu peguei de inicio do AdVenture Capitalism, mas descartei logo que eles fizeram uma atualização que usava os anjos investidores como boost. Mas cada um é uma pessoa diferente, recomendo dar uma olhada e jogar alguns. :)
Story and coding, but really mostly coding.
Music is the most optional thing on the list.
Graphic is the second most optional thing on the list. Dwarf Fortress and Angband and A Dark Room do well enough without fancy graphics. ASCII is enough.
Story is kinda optional. There were good games without a story. (But please note you need to know what your game will be about and how it'll work. You don't need a strong story to do that.)
So yea, you should probably start with coding.
There's a lot of emphasis on Video Games, bigger titles with expensive graphics.
The explorations of mechanics and story telling I've found most interesting have been in very minimalist games.
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ is part anti-idle, rpg with a surprisingly engrossing atmosphere. Twine is a game writing platform for kind of text adventure-y games, http://noncanon.com/HorseMaster.html surreal and disturbing http://www.playalterego.com/alterego life simulator.
There's also a lot of games without an inbuilt narrative, but with a potential to create one. In games like The Sims, Minecraft, and Terraria, I'm collecting things, I'm building a house, or more complex stories about the NPC's can play out.
How about a text based game? Something like candybox? Love it or hate it, Destiny has the Grimoire that basically carries the story.
Edit: A dark room is another great text based game
You mean like Ib and Witch's House? http://vgperson.com/games/
You might also want to check out A Dark Room
if you really need it offline you can do it with every language you like
if not, id go web based
today noone really wants to download something and install/start a file, take a look at http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ and decide if that kind of text adventure is enough (you can ofc do more text / less interaction)
web:
- everyone can run it
- easier to bring mobile
- many more tutorials/guides available
- no download
- can be wrapped in a desktop application if its really necessary
- easier to publish new versions
A Dark Room is a really interesting piece of interactive narrative which also doesn't require a lot of immediacy. People do speed runs but a person's first playthrough is usually going to take ages. I'd recommend not looking up what you need to do or even what it is and just let yourself discover it.
Candy Box is another game of this type so the same stuff applies.
A Dark Room maybe not most addicting ever, but a ton of fun.
I'm also really into Peggle right now. I play it with my boyfriend, and sometimes I close my eyes and see Peggle
I never heard of this game...but playing the browser version, it piqued my interest.
Sold.
EDIT:
Browser Game. The paid version is much faster, more visuals, more polished
Try "A dark room" (http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/, site seems to be down though), keep it up for a bit, it gets better :)
And if you haven't tried it, Dwarf Fortress is the ultimate in games like these.
Bolas not lasting forever is fine, you should be able to kill the enemy pretty quickly anyways.
I'm not sure why you're talking about 4-9 hours, the game can be done much quicker without any "hyper mode".
And no, I'm not gonna click that suspicious link, I'll stick to playing the regular version.
PS: you might wanna try to format the post to make it easier to read.
This especially helps with your game getting shared around. When I can click on a link and it drops me right into the game, (the most extreme example being A Dark Room) I am much more likely to try it out and share the link with other people.
A Dark Room, http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/
A very minimalistic browser game, but a brilliant proof, that you can create mood and suspense with text only.
Edit: I see, that /u/TheLoner19 beat me to the answer. Keeping my answer up for the link to the game.