For example, you may buy a fishing license which slowly generates coins in addition to whichever other passive and active ways you are collecting coins. Collect coins over time and buy licenses, cards and items that allow you to collect coins or other items at a faster rate. There are active and passive ways of leveling up. (To be fair, drawing a good user interface can be a tedious task.) The aim of the game is to feed a dragon and level up. It looks like it was created and drawn by a child, and the developer’s choice to overuse color is baffling. Leaving the game idle will allow you to collect more candy so that you may buy things such as a copper sword. It turns into a resource management game where you may take up quests and kill monsters in order to gain more candy. There is very little to do at first, but over time you are given more options. You receive a candy at a rate of one per second, and you may eat the candy to replenish your HP or use it to buy things. If you are genuinely a fan of text-based games, then some of these titles will hit the spot. It is fair to say that few games are able to recreate the atmospheric feeling that Dark Room generates. Games such as Candy Box, Space Lich Omega and The Gold Factory are actually as good as Dark Room, but they are good in a slightly different way. We have tried to avoid the simplest of games that were made on Twine, but we threw one in for good measure (it being Tower of the Blood Lord). It is a very unusual game with a certain unexpected charm that isn’t immediately apparent from its outward appearance. Yet, over time, you are given more options and the story starts to branch out a little. After all, you cannot choose to stop stoking the fire, nor can you choose to not make an animal trap because the game will not progress if you refuse. When you first play, the game will seem to have a very linear story progression. Before you know it, you are outside collecting wood, making traps and building carts. You start with just a fire that you have to stoke, and then a stranger enters.
On the surface, it looks like an e-book where you select a few options and progress the story. A Dark Room is an odd game that many people have found unexpectedly addictive.