A Dark Room is a text-based puzzle mystery game. It starts with something simple, you need to light a fire in a cold room, and then you end up building a village! Explore a ruined world and slowly uncover history.
How to Play A Dark Room
Your goal is to grow from one person in a freezing room into a working settlement, then push out into the wasteland far enough to find a way off this world. There’s no map, no explanation, and no tutorial. The story reveals itself a line at a time in the log on the left side of the screen, and half the fun is figuring out what kind of game you’re even playing.
It starts with two lines: the fire is dead, the room is freezing. Light the fire and keep stoking it, and the room warms up. Every stoke uses a piece of wood, so you’ll need to head out to A Silent Forest to gather more. Soon a ragged stranger stumbles in and collapses in the corner. Keep the room warm and she recovers, and it turns out she’s a builder. From there, wood becomes traps, carts, and huts, and your lonely room slowly turns into a village.
How to get started in A Dark Room:
- Click light fire to warm the room.
- Click stoke fire whenever the log says the room is getting cold.
- Click A Silent Forest at the top, then click gather wood to fill your stores.
- Watch the stores box on the right to track your resources.
- Click back to the room and ask the builder for traps, a cart, and huts as they unlock.
- Click check traps in the forest to collect what your traps caught.
Putting Villagers to Work
New villagers gather wood by default, and every gatherer adds to your wood supply automatically, even while you’re off doing other things. As you add buildings, you can move people into other jobs:
- Hunters bring in fur and meat (you’ll need a lodge first)
- Trappers use meat as bait to bring in fur, teeth, and strange scales
- Tanners turn fur into leather
- Smokehouse workers turn meat into cured meat, which you’ll need for exploring
Every job uses something up, so balance matters. If your smokehouse worker runs out of meat, they’re just standing around. Shift people back to gathering wood whenever you need a big push toward your next building.
Buildings Worth Saving Up For
Wood is the main currency, and the bigger buildings need serious stockpiles:
- Lodge: Helps villagers to hunt.
- Trading post: Nomads set up shop and sell things like scales and a compass.
- Tannery: Turns fur into leather.
- Smokehouse: Keeps your meat from spoiling by curing it.
- Workshop: The builder says she could make finer things if she had tools, and this is where she makes them.
The compass is the big one. Once you buy it at the trading post, new locations opens up.
Visitors, Beasts, and Bad News
Your village isn’t safe just because it’s warm. Sometimes your traps get torn apart and large prints lead off into the forest. Follow them and you might find a wounded beast and come home with a pile of fur. Other times, a pack of angry beasts pours out of the trees and attacks the village, and you lose villagers. More huts mean more people to replace them.
Visitors show up too, and they’re worth paying attention to:
- A beggar may ask for spare furs to stay warm at night. Help him out and he leaves something behind.
- A wanderer with an empty cart may ask for wood or fur and promise to come back with more. Sometimes she does.
You’ll also hear shuffling noises through the walls and get a choice to investigate or ignore them. Little events like this pop up throughout the game, and they’re part of the mystery.
Fighting What’s Out There
Strange birds, wild beasts, madmen, soldiers, snipers, swarms of rats, and packs of lizards all attack you on the road. If you head out with no weapons, all you can do is punch. Combat buttons depend on what you’re carrying:
- Stab with a bone spear
- Swing and slash with iron and steel swords
- Tangle with bolas, which hold an enemy in place but are used up after one throw
- Shoot with a rifle, as long as you have bullets
During a fight you can also eat meat or use meds to recover health. Medicine is precious, so stock up when you can. Better gear makes a huge difference: steel armor and a steel sword turn fights that nearly killed you into one-hit wins.
How Far Can You Go?
Clearing a location often turns it into an outpost, a safe spot on the map where you can refill your water. Chaining outposts together is how you reach the far corners of the world. Once you have steel, you can also make a water tank, which lets you carry a lot more water and travel much farther before turning back.
Out there you’ll find strange things too: alien alloy, energy cells, and a mysterious charm. Hang on to that charm. There’s an old wanderer in a murky swamp who has a story to tell, and what he gives you in return helps you make the most of your food.
Tips
- Build huts early and often. More people means more wood, more workers, and a cushion for when beasts attack the village.
- Pack food and water before anything else. It’s easy to fill your bag with loot and come home starving or thirsty, or not come home at all.
- Bring a mix of weapons. Each weapon gives you a different attack, so a spear, a sword, and a couple of bolas cover more situations than one weapon alone.
More Games Like This
If you liked A Dark Room, you will love games like 99 Nights in the Forest, where you need to find enough resources to get through 99 nights in a dark forest. Other fun options are Island of Treasures or Jacksmith. Have a look through our puzzle category for more.
Release Date
July 2019
Developer
Doublespeak Games made this game.
Platforms
- Web browser
- Android
- iOS
FAQ
Is A Dark Room still available to play?
Yes, A Dark Room is still available to play online at CrazyGames.
Is a Dark Room not meant to have visuals?
Yes! A Dark Room is not meant to have visuals as it is a text-based game.
Gameplay Video
