Informational Structure and Interactive Possibilities of "A Dark Room"

A dark room.

The room is freezing.

The fire is dead.

Light a fire!

The fire is burning. The light from the fire spills from the windows, out into the dark…
(Townsend and Rajan, 2013)


This is how the game A Dark Room begins. There is nothing but black text on a white background. Intriguing, isn't it? If your answer is ‘yes’, continue reading! This essay will walk the reader through some basic ideas from the world of interactive storytelling and design; It will examine the informational structures and interactive possibilities of the role-playing text-based game A Dark Room - “The best-selling game that no one can explain” as Michael Thomsen writes in his New Yorker feature. The game was created by Michael Townsend in 2013 and it was originally made for web browsers. Later the same year, with the help of the developer Amir Rajan, the game was released in the Apple App Store. In the past, similar games, like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork widened the landscape of video games. And like it’s predecessors, A Dark Room uses only text for every thing - exposition, events, actions, etc. (Thomsen, 2014) As the game progresses, the player gains the abilities to collect resources, interact with strangers, start a village, and explore the world. (Leigh, 2014)



No video-game would be possible without interfaces. Those are, simply put, interactive screens that give the player the ability to interact with a game. A Dark Room has the two main categories of user interface (UI) - one is dispensing information, like what kinds and how much resources you have (in the game - wood, cloth, meat, fur, teeth, scales and others) ; and the other one, allowing action - giving the player an option to do something - for example, build a hut, trading post, workshop or the decision to trade with strangers, follow footsteps and so on. (Mitchell, 2012) The color scheme of A Dark Room, also a big part of the interface design, is extremely minimalistic - only black and white. More than that, there are basically no graphics, which are pictures and movies created using computers. The closest the game gets to having a graphic element are the rectangles that contain certain pieces of information the player needs. As we mentioned above, this is not something we see for the very first time and it is not too unconventional. Of course, if we analyse the current landscape of video games we will see that “Game developers are increasingly interested in highly simulated and dynamic worlds that allow players to create, destroy, and interact with the environment in interesting ways,” as Tony Tamasi says, being senior vice president of content and technology at graphics hardware specialist Nvidia.” (Stuard, 2015) Still, text-based games, like A Dark Room, are being made today - many beginners start out with this type of games, so they can get familiarised with the programming language. Proof for that is the presence of the Seven Day Roguelike contest, where the game author has one hundred and sixty-eight (168) hours to write the code for a game. (7DRL, 2011) However, what might be surprising is how popular A Dark Room became. It was an absolute best-seller in the App store and it was included in a number of Best Games lists, including Forbes, Paste and the popular gaming website Giant Bomb. (Thomsen, 2014) Amir Rajan, the game developer, even wrote a book, called “Surviving the App Store. How to make it as an indie game developer” (Rajan, no date).

With the help of the interface, we have something called “gameplay”. This word is used to describe the overall experience the gamer goes through, while playing a game. This includes, but is not limited to rules, tasks, plot and the player’s connection and interaction with it. A couple of things excluded from the understanding of gameplay are sound and graphics - and anyway there are none of those in the game this essay studies. (Lindley, Nacke and Sennersten 2008) In the very beginning of A Dark Room, the player wakes up in a cold, dark room. At first, the only action you could take is lighting and stoking a fire. Then you get the chance of gathering resources, setting traps, building, etc. The game doesn’t give too much information at once - the more you play, the more you learn about its world. The creator says “I originally wrote A Dark Room to tell its story entirely through environmental cues—no exposition, no dialogue, nothing.” (Thomsen, 2014) Some of these cues are discomforting. For example, why do you find pieces of cloth in your traps? “And why does the game suddenly start calling the few workers who’ve come to help you slaves?”, asks Michael Thomsen, who interviewed the creator of the game. He goes on to describe the feeling one gets while playing the game: “[T]he game evokes the simplest text-based computer games of the nineteen-seventies while stimulating a very modern impulse to constantly check and recheck one’s phone. It’s like a puzzle composed of deconstructed to-do lists.” (Thomsen, 2014)

Not every game is interactive in the full sense of the word. Some people would say that every game is interactive in its nature. Lifelong gamer, former Gamestop employee, and amateur game developer Brian Woody says: “I can't really think of any non-interactive games. Remove interactivity and you're just a spectator, not a player.” (Quora and Woody, 2014) However, this essay argues that there is another level after spectator and player. And that only a truly interactive design can reach it. Chris Crawford writes about this in his book “The art of interactive design: a euphonious and illuminating guide to building successful software”. (2003) In his opinion, the term “interactive” is “overused and under-understood”. He agrees some people might argue that a person opening a refrigerator, making the light to turn on is interaction, but he also says: “[T]his kind of interaction is silly and beneath the intellectual dignity of almost every-body. I’m concerned with interactivity that has some blood in its veins.” So how interactive is A Dark Room? In the New Yorker article, Michael Townsend comments on this. He thinks that giving hints about the environmental setting, works well “because it gives the player the feeling that they are constructing the narrative, even if they’re only discovering it.” (Thomsen, 2014) Ultimately, the end in the game is only one, yet there’s a high level of interactivity in other parts, thus changing how and when you reach the end. For example, you have the option to choose what kind and how many buildings you create. How many traps; how many people will take care of each different task; will you investigate the scratching sounds coming from the storage room or you will ignore them; will you track the large prints, leading away from your broken trap; will you trade with the visitors and so on.

The Oxford dictionary defines the word “narrative” as “A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.” And in the book “Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative”, the author Mark S. Meadows, explains how a person has to interpret the writing in order for it to become a narration. And traditionally, this opinion comes from the author of the piece. Be that as it may, Meadows suggests that in some cases the narrative can be created simultaneously, in collaboration between the author and the reader. (Meadows, 2003) Let’s look at what is the approach of A Dark Room to it’s storytelling. Similar to the color scheme, it is very minimal, thus giving the player curiosity and wish to play and find out more. Not long after the start, the player gains power to control up to 80 people in his village. This makes the story look pretty linear and straightforward. It reminds a typical hero’s journey from a bad place in his life - waking up confused and cold - to managing a prosperous village. Anyhow, after half of the way into the game, the player gets some hints that the character might not be a hero after all. (Pierce, 2014) As mentioned above, the “workers” turn into “slaves”. “This is not an active choice made by the player and can be quite surprising. In fact, as Rajan shares on his development blog, some players were so upset that they stopped at this point.” (Pierce, 2014, p4)

Why this might be so upsetting can be explained with the Character Attachment Theory. Most role-playing games encourage the player to put themselves into the shoes of the character they are playing. (Pierce, 2014) And that could be beneficial for it makes a person play and like the game more. However, “Players that have been envisioning themselves as “pro-social players” and have been telling themselves a story about how their character is a warrior on a journey for justice have to completely rewrite their understanding of the narrative.” (Pierce, 2014, p4) And such a turn in narrative can be quite distressing.

Usually the plot of a story or game serves as a function of time, as a plan, it’s just the series of events that happen. In interactive storytelling, “[t]he timing of the events in a plot are determined by both the author and reader. In many cases when the interactivity is of a high quality, it is determined more by the reader than the author.” (Meadows, 2003) The plot of A Dark Room has the previously mentioned twist that the player couldn't possibly know beforehand. This is because of the minimal design and the lack of images. (Pierce, 2014) “Most players will miss small contradictory details and assume that their character is human. But the fact that the main character is not human, and is n fact an alien from the race that caused the apocalypse, is revealed about two-thirds of the way through the game.” (Pierce, 2014, p4)

This plot element shows that the understanding and interpretation a player has about the narrative of a game is highly important. Everything, from the design choices of the developers, through the little to none background information, description and rules given in the App Store; to the sparse environmental clues, contribute hugely to the effectiveness of the narrative.

If a game has more than one way of playing it, we can say that it’s highly interactive and with a non-linear storyline. (Iuppa, 2001) “Replayability gives a game a great sense of realism.” (luppa, 2001, p38) A Dark Room does not stop encouraging you to play more even when you reach the end once. Although the narrative seems to be linear, when you complete the game, you find out that there was a hidden side of the narrative. (Pierce, 2014) “After beating the game the text says “The end?”, and the player is challenged to start over without using Huts (and thus without enslaving humans). So it is now clear to the player that there was a hidden narrative branch at the beginning of the game.” (Pierce, 2014, p5)

While playing the game you constantly check how many resources you have and you watch them slowly go up. The developer behind the game went through something similar in his real life. In March he shares his disappointment with the number of downloads the game got at the App Store. (Leigh, 2014) "It's extremely difficult waking up every morning and being disappointed with the number of downloads your game gets.” (Leigh, 2014) But then this “[…] strange hybrid, part mystery story and part smartphone productivity software, […] inexplicably rocketed to the most-downloaded spot in the App Store’s games section in April and stayed there throughout the month. A product of a collaboration between two men who worked together without ever having met in person.” (Thomsen, 2014) “One comment that appears often on the iOS App Store is to pay attention to every detail as you play. You can only play A Dark Room for the very first time once, so you better enjoy that first time.” (Pierce, 2014, p5)

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12. Thomsen, M. (2014) A Dark Room: The Best-Selling Game That No One Can Explain. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-dark-room-the-best-selling-game-that-no-one-can-explain (Accessed: December 2016).

13. Townsend, M. and Rajan, A. (2013) A dark room. Available at: http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/ (Accessed: December 2016).

images of the game: