A Dark Room - minimalist text-based game

A Dark Room - minimalist text-based game(adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com)

544 points by NeekGerd 13 years ago | 234 comments

mjn 13 years ago |

The style of a minimalist interface that starts sprouting things, somewhat ASCII-game-ish yet also rather dynamic, reminds me a bit of Candy Box: http://candies.aniwey.net/ . It's an interesting UI and 'reveal' style for a game, and glad to see another one using it. Feels somewhat refreshing.

edit: Ah ok, if you view-source it mentions Candy Box as an inspiration.

shardling 13 years ago | |

And Frog Fractions is worth checking out if you like Candy Box.

endgame 13 years ago | | |

Frog Fractions is worth checking out, full stop.

MrBra 13 years ago | | |

how does it even relate to Frog Fraction ?

jmilloy 13 years ago | | |

I don't get it. I liked A Dark Room and Candy Box, but hated Frog Fractions, which is completely unrelated.

mambodog 13 years ago | |

To anyone else trying Candy Box, a few hints to get started:

- Wait until you have 60 candies (new options appear)

- Click the cowboy hat 4 times

- Buy the wooden sword

NeekGerd 13 years ago | | |

You can also click on the lollipop to lower the prices.

hk__2 13 years ago | | |

If you want to cheat, open the devtools, and type candies.nbrOwned = Infinity.

aghull 13 years ago | |

Isn't this a lot closer to dwarf fortress?

networked 13 years ago |

This reminds me less of parser-based text games and more of the 1990s hyperfiction like Afternoon, a story [1], Victory Garden [2] or 253 [3] and net.art like My boyfriend came back from the war [4]. Give those a look if you liked this. The hypertext novel 253, which looks in the life of every passenger on a London Underground train, is probably the best starting point.

Edit: Oh, and also Fallen London [5] and other StoryNexus games. In fact, in terms of mechanics A Dark Room is probably the closest to Fallen London of all the games of which I can think.

[1] Sadly, the HTML sample at http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/pmaf/hypertext/aft/ appears to not work in modern browsers. It was created in a pre-HTML hypertext system called Storyspace; you can see what it is supposed to look like on its native platform at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djIrHF8S6-Q.

[2] http://www.eastgate.com/VG/VGStart.html

[3] http://www.ryman-novel.com/

[4] http://www.teleportacia.org/war/

[5] http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/

networked 13 years ago | |

s/looks in/looks into/

By the way, and if you're at all interested in the history of hypertext fiction do watch this video: http://vimeo.com/15561443. The speaker in the video talks about a fascinating parallel culture of hypertext writers and readers who paradoxically seem to resist the idea of putting their creations on the Web. Instead, some of the authors choose to disseminate their works on physical media: floppy disks, CD-ROMs and now flash drives.

Aardwolf 13 years ago |

Here's something I consider a problem:

If you're in the cave, and something attacks you, at the end if you press "eat meat", sometimes, exactly at the point when you want to click it, the buttons become "leave cave" instead, and you accidently press that. Then, a next fight may begin, and you're at low health.

Please provide some consistent way to heal yourself before a next fight.

ISL 13 years ago | |

If the combat dialog and the post-combat dialog were spatially distinct, it would alleviate the primary problem. "stabslashstabslashstabslashstabslashleave.... nooooooooooooo!"

If the combat action buttons didn't self organize, but rather sat in the same spot (perhaps in order of discovery?), then combat frantic clicking could be consistent.

Also, sometimes the tooltip that shows the cost of a "shoot" hangs over the "eat meat" button, leading to unclickable death if you're almost dead. Clicking the tooltip doesn't shoot, nor does it yield increased health. Either behavior would be preferable to nothing.

livingparadox 13 years ago | | |

This... so much... I've died a couple times from this, actually...

rdsoze 13 years ago | |

World.water = 80; Path.outfit["energy cell"] = 80; Path.outfit["cured meat"] = 40; Path.outfit["grenade"] = 10; Path.outfit["torch"] = 10; Path.outfit["bone spear"] = 1; Path.outfit["iron sword"] = 1;

mrgreenfur 13 years ago | | |

Why with the energy cells without the laser rifle?

pearjuice 13 years ago |

I progressed with a rather slow pace but after the Egyptians came and asked me whether I wanted to help build a new pyramid for their current Pharaoh - as apparently I was a top architect known far-and-wide - things became interesting very quickly. With the gold I earned I could buy my own workers and I am now comfortably running a rivaling empire battling the Pharaoh which employed me earlier. I do seem to have trouble with foreign spies passing on weaponry I research. Guess I have to raise the bounty for those who turn in traitors.

Al-Khwarizmi 13 years ago | |

I totally believed this comment, completed the game and liked it, but am slightly disappointed about not having built pyramids and fought pharaohs :)

hawkharris 13 years ago |

This highlights the importance of game mechanics. I was hooked for about six or seven hours on gameplay alone, even without graphics or sound.

ams6110 13 years ago |

Seems to use the psychological technique of intermittent rewards to encourage continued clicking of "stoke the fire." Unfortunately after about 4 stokings with no new developments in the game, I got bored and quit.

anigbrowl 13 years ago | |

Too bad. I am now headman of a large village because I kept stoking. Series A financing can't be far behind!

Dylan16807 13 years ago | |

In this and candy box you're not really supposed to pay attention to the window for the first couple minutes. There is literally nothing to do.

Then later once you're maybe 10 minutes in you can switch away for extended times if you want to wait for the continuous income, no need to press buttons, no 'intermittent rewards'.

It could be changed but it's not actually depending on any kind of psychological tricks. The delays are just a minor throttle at the start.

Edit: Actually, to be precise, you only have to stoke the fire once. It's just a deliberately paced cutscene. No psychology there.

tripzilch 13 years ago | | |

> In this and candy box you're not really supposed to pay attention to the window for the first couple minutes. There is literally nothing to do.

Yeah, interesting call, that. When I played Candybox, I was told "before you dismiss So what it, wait until you get 60 candies, then shit gets real".

So, what does a self-respecting hacker do, when faced with 60 seconds of "literally nothing to do" ... except the challenge of opening the JS Console to see if I can make that counter run faster, preferably in less than 60 seconds? ;-)

(answer: yes, it was in fact fairly easy)

pdknsk 13 years ago |

In case anyone wants to accelerate the game slightly, but still play it as intended, set this in the Chrome console.

window.Engine._incomeTimeout = setTimeout(Engine.collectIncome, 500) // default 1000

IMO it's not a cheat, because it just shortens somewhat tedious waiting early in the game, but doesn't alter it otherwise.

jborden13 13 years ago | |

I ran this in console. just to automate gathering wood and trap checking, since forgetting to switch between panels is easy to do:

function pushButtons(){if(!$("#gatherButton,#trapsButton").hasClass('disabled')){$("#gatherButton,#trapsButton").trigger('click');}}setInterval(pushButtons, 1000);

cheapsteak 13 years ago | | |

$('#roomPanel').width(350);

See inside and outside at the same time

darkarmani 13 years ago | |

I just realized what this really does. It just sets up a second callback to Engine.collectIncome. So when you go to set it "back", you end up with 3 income collecting loops. If you try to set it "back" multiple times you end up with more income loops.

anigbrowl 13 years ago | |

I think that would make it a bit unmanageable in the later stages, though.

pdknsk 13 years ago | | |

Well you can easily switch back to default!

Another tip for fighting: equip different weapons. I had only equipped the best weapon, as is customary in games, not knowing you can attack with all equipped weapons at once basically (each weapon has a separate timer). This makes a huge difference.

croikle 13 years ago |

Warning: while the first part of the game works fine in a touch-based interface, a later section requires a keyboard. You'll be annoyingly unable to proceed on a touchscreen.

hayksaakian 13 years ago | |

Just spent an hour before I hit this wall. So frustrating.

Even though it was surprisingly mostly playable on mobile (except: small buttons, tooltips)

taternuts 13 years ago |

This is pretty damned cool, and it looks like there is a lot of thought out content backing it....I thought I'd look at it and move on, but I've been playing it for awhile

ISL 13 years ago |

Perhaps "Embark" should be "Explore"? I thought I would leave my town forever. Didn't leave until I'd maxed out every property of armor etc.

tobiasSoftware 13 years ago | |

I had a similar issue. I thought the compass wasn't anything special, I thought it was just another resource, maybe I could trade it for other things or something. I literally bought the compass as the last thing, I had my hut up to 10, a spear, armor, and a water bottle, and was thinking the game had a great beginning but a really boring ending where you just spam wood and huts and get leather for collectible items. Perhaps changing it from a compass to a map would help, I was thinking the compass represented metal, I think a map would more clearly indicate exploration. Or maybe the builder should remark that a compass/map would be useful to find more resources.

Willwhatley 13 years ago | |

I detect a nod here to Dwarf Fortress.

saraid216 13 years ago | |

How were you able to do this without finding the mines?

ISL 13 years ago | | |

Maxed out -> leather armor. It was the maximum available attribute at the time.

ajuc 13 years ago |

Fighting is funny - it's beneficial to keep all old weapons with you, then you can attack with 2 swords, shoot rifle and laser and use bayonet before the first sword timout finishes.

Very addictive game.

BruceIV 13 years ago | |

How did you get a bayonet? I never found one.

ajuc 13 years ago | | |

A veteran had it I think, it was on a battlefield 1/4 of the screen to the right from the village, IIRC.

emiliobumachar 12 years ago | | |

In the sulfur mines. Last soldier, a veteran, attacks you with it and drops it afterwards.

mateuszowski 13 years ago |

I really like the source code for this game! It's quite readable and good fun to look over :-) Now I remember this was my original reason why I was interested in programming - wanted to figure out these mysterious listings for test-based adventures on Atari. I really like how all the possibilities are encoded there, but you can't entirely picture the game until you actually play it :-)

ynniv 13 years ago |

I played this to completion a week ago. It can feel a little tedious st times, but this is usually because I missed something, and is ultimately well written at all stages. Keep with it and you won't be disappointed!

psbp 13 years ago | |

How does it end. I have the spaceship, but I need to go to bed.

BruceIV 13 years ago | | |

you're nearly done, you just want to upgrade it with the alien alloy you found in the bore sites

jmuguy 13 years ago |

Stuck in an empty office expanding a RAID. This will do nicely :)

ancarda 13 years ago |

I have been spending more time than I care to admit playing this. Seriously. Hours on end. Possibly the most addictive game I've played since Tiny Wings. No idea why.

ghshephard 13 years ago | |

Likewise - just lost my entire weekend to it. I think I finished it - but the ending isn't completely clear on the topic.

hawkharris 13 years ago |

This is probably a simple question, but I'm new to JavaScript: How did you create the side-scrolling animation effect that happens when you switch between locations?

firegrind 13 years ago | |

jQuery is your friend.

tobiasSoftware 13 years ago | | |

I need to get into this, I'm trying to learn how to make UI more smooth and modern, and this game really does it well :)

vinceguidry 13 years ago |

I'm having a serious problem later on in the game when I have four different options on the screen during a fight. The hover resource-display obscures the action button and reduces the clickable area to a tiny sliver. I'm losing battles that I should be winning, a lot.

sagarm 13 years ago | |

Yes, this was annoying enough that I eventually stopped. Two suggestions:

1) Add keyboard shortcuts, make them discoverable via an underlined character

2) increase the amount of space between the buttons so the tooltips appear over whitespace.

That said, I played for hours before giving up! Had tons of fun, thanks for making this!

vinceguidry 13 years ago | | |

Keyboard shortcuts would probably make the game too easy. But I agree, any game that keeps me going for hours has to be great!

vinceguidry 13 years ago | |

Also, it would be really nice if there were arrows that increased/decreased allocations by ten as well as just one.

AdamTReineke 13 years ago | | |

Or if there was some scroll action hooked up that fired if you were hovered and you scrolled.

Jhsto 13 years ago |

Is there any other way to share the game state than copying the local storage? Even though I use Chromium with linked Google accounts between Windows and Ubuntu, it does not save local storage data. And that is not even possible on an iPad, for an example.

spodek 13 years ago |

I got eaten by a grue.

creamyhorror 13 years ago | |

Or did the grue perhaps stoke a fire?

socillion 13 years ago |

Interesting game, but I'm surprised it doesn't work better on phones - it seems like a perfect game for the medium.

PButcher93 13 years ago |

I've been at it nearly an hour. Very good indeed.

Love the minimalist interface.

ipodize 13 years ago |

I just bought a compass, and entered "A barren world" on my iPad... And I'm stuck. What are the controls for this part of the game?

ximeng 13 years ago | |

arrow keys

ipodize 13 years ago | | |

Darn, guess I'll have to start all over again on my PC.

Seems like there'd be a use for a way to "save" games by emailing a parameterized URL to yourself... Or just an alternative to arrow keys for all of those tablet users out there.

Still a great game, though! Next time I'm feeling like procrastinating on a 2007 vintage netbook, I'll know where to look :)

dropdownmenu 13 years ago |

This is a very cool use of html as a medium to tell a story and keep the player involved. Defiantly want to see more games in a similar style!

irishcoffee 13 years ago |

This is pretty awesome.

muxxa 13 years ago |

This game is highly addictive, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Some usability issues from memory for the next iteration (some that others have pointed out):

- The 'up' and 'down' arrows when allocating workers have a much-too-small clickable area. Compounding this was a slight offset between the arrow image and the clickable area

- Allocating workers & allocating the spoils after a battle both shared the problem of only being able to increment by one unit at a time. Lots of annoying clicking.

- When you hover over the worker allocation button when there are no workers allocated it doesn't indicate whether the various resources will be consumed or produced. You have to allocate at least one worker to find out this info.

- It took me ages to figure out that the 'gather wood' button is independent of the villagers gathering wood. I still don't really understand the relationship between 'check traps' and bait and allocating extra hunters/trappers.

- as mentioned elsewhere here, there's a popdown over buttons showing what resources are required by the button. This is incredibly annoying when it obscures another click target, especially during a fight.

- (As Aardwolf pointed out) When gathering the spoils or as an enemy denies, the layout changes and the buttons jump around, meaning it's very easy to unintentionally click on e.g. 'leave city'

- It's a bit annoying to have to switch between the 'raucous village' and 'small room' tabs to figure out which resources are low and how to allocate workers

- When you find fur etc. in the traps it should say how much fur is found

- It's kind of hard to figure out what resources are going where. Maybe each message from the stream of messages down the right hand could be positioned as a callout bubble beside the resource or item that is affected.

Hope this is constructive and super job — great originality!

nandemo 13 years ago |

How do you avoid the beasts that keep killing your guests?

jiaaro 13 years ago | |

Not totally sure, but I believe it's mostly a matter of keeping the fire going

croikle 13 years ago | |

Don't worry about it. Actually, you get meat & fur from that event, so it's not terrible.

lake99 13 years ago | |

New guests come in when you have vacancies anyway.

ajuc 13 years ago | |

villagers are one of the cheaper resources in that game :)

neil_s 13 years ago |

I'm stuck in civilisation where I need steel to make the next set of items. Is there any more efficient way of producing steel than buying it in exchange for scales and teeth? Like a steel mine or a person like a tanner that can convert iron into steel?

paradoja 13 years ago | |

At one point you can build a steelworks and produce steel from iron and coal.

johnny22 13 years ago | |

you need iron mine and coal mine, then you can build a steelworks and allocate steelworkers

newsmaster 13 years ago |

Very good game! I refrained from cheating for a few hours but got bored waiting for furs n things. Poked around JS for unlimited ammo and just completed the game minutes ago. Glad I cheated because otherwise I know I'd be playing it for days on end.

cupcake-unicorn 13 years ago |

I really enjoyed this, and it introduced me to Candy Box as well. This is saying something since I suffer from pretty severe issues with concentration and haven't been able to play games for some time. Thank you very much.

djrconcepts 13 years ago |

Speed up the cool down when gathering wood or checking traps. Paste this code into chrome console.

Button.cooldown = function (btn) { var cd = btn.data("cooldown"); if(cd > 0) { $('div.cooldown', btn).stop(true, true).width("100%").animate({width: '0%'}, cd * 10, 'linear', function() { var b = $(this).closest('.button'); b.data('onCooldown', false); if(!b.data('disabled')) { b.removeClass('disabled'); } }); btn.addClass('disabled'); btn.data('onCooldown', true); } }

tempestn 13 years ago |

And there went my whole night.

ISL 13 years ago | |

Mine too. Took ~5 hours to finish.

reledi 13 years ago |

Any idea what 'charm' does? I haven't found a use for it yet.

Dewie 13 years ago | |

I think I used it once: I wanted to talk to a man on a swamp and I needed one charm to talk to him.

Be careful about them, since they seem to be finite in supply. Though I don't losing all of them and not being able to talk to that man would make any discernable difference in the long run.

BruceIV 13 years ago | | |

Yeah, as far as I could tell, you only used them to talk to the old man in the swamp - you'll find them periodically in your traps, though - I had 8 or 10 by the time I finished the game, so don't worry too much about losing them.

jmuguy 13 years ago |

Anyone figured out how to explore the "landmarks" on the dusty path. Like I see the caves but I can't enter them, move my guy over them but no matter what key I press he won't enter.

gbhn 13 years ago | |

you need a torch

S4M 13 years ago |

I feel slightly stuck at some point, because it's too hard to get large quantities or iron to build new things, and fur is worth nothing...

zellux 13 years ago | |

You need to find an iron mine in the map first, and then you can put workers for irons.

nappy-doo 13 years ago | |

Have you tried mining iron with villagers?

S4M 13 years ago | | |

I don't know how I can do that, even though I courageously freed some mine from some monster or thieves (can't remember what it was exactly) a while ago.

jwatte 13 years ago |

The pace is set reasonably well, but after a while it gets too slow and I have to give up. Mad props for good amount of polish, though!

snogglethorpe 13 years ago |

How do I get leather...? I have a tannery, I guess I need a tanner, but I don't know how to get one...

"Tanner: 0", "Hunter: 0", etc, have little icons next to them, but clicking does nothing...

I've maxed out my village etc (and am accumulating huge quantities of wood I can't use for anything anymore), but can't seem to advance until I get some leather!

ddinh 13 years ago | |

The little diamond to the right is actually an up/down arrow; click the up arrow to reassign gatherers to other jobs.

snogglethorpe 13 years ago | | |

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...... ><

thank you... :)

psbp 13 years ago |

Is there anything cool after getting the spaceship? I can't keep playing, but I will if I can get more of a fix....

joshguthrie 13 years ago | |

Seriously... I just completed the spaceship sequence and I'm too mad to even react properly (per HN standards). I knew this was gonna happen and it did happen. Shame on me.

qrybam 13 years ago | | |

--- SPOILER ALERT ---

Really enjoyed the game the whole way through, but I agree with other people on this thread, the ending (or lack of) kinda ripped my heart out. Glad I took some screenshots before flying off into space.

http://bit.ly/17K3a1D - Building Screen

http://bit.ly/12tUk37 - Production Screen

http://bit.ly/17K3ldl - Dusty Path Screen (After getting Compass)

http://bit.ly/14Eyk4u - Map Screen

http://bit.ly/17sIVSm - Starship Screen

Sorry, no screenshots of end sequence - was too busy dodging falling ASCII characters.

alainbryden 13 years ago | | |

Agreed. A minute of dodging, ship goes zoom, and then a game reset. It'd be nice to at least see a summary of my resources, or a score, or anything.

readme 13 years ago | |

I had looked at the source and concluded the spaceship was just a file left from some other project. Damn, I should have played further.

psbp 13 years ago | | |

It's really cool when you first find the alien alloy, but the spaceship sequence is pretty unexciting.

shmageggy 13 years ago | |

Spoiler alert?

talmir 13 years ago |

I started playing, stoked the fire twice, realized that this single playing game had a "wait until you can click again" mechanic that was purely there to waste my time (I want to play, not wait. This isnt farmville). So I quit. It is probably a great game somewhere. But design like that puts me off.

Aardwolf 13 years ago |

Pretty neat! I found a bug though. I think all my villagers got eaten by a best :( But it keeps saying "3" next to "gatherer", even though there are 0 people, it gathers 0 wood, it says 0/4 population, and the up arrows to increase other resources don't work. Very confusing.

lsaferite 13 years ago | |

Your builder, who never gets eaten, produces +2 wood every 10 seconds.

glomph 13 years ago |

Similar http://candies.aniwey.net/

efnx 13 years ago |

Got all the way to embarking on my iPad. Now I'm stuck! Wish I could transfer my game to my laptop.

Omni5cience 13 years ago | |

You can! I did the same thing.

If you turn on the remote web inspector (in Settings it's under Safari > Advanced), and then open Safari on a Mac, you can copy the game's save state (localStorage.gameState) to an instance of the game running on your computer.

efnx 13 years ago | | |

Shoot, I use chrome on my iPad, arrrrrrr.

Tichy 13 years ago |

Is this point and click adventures for people whose first encounter with computer games was farmville?

ruxkor 13 years ago |

A very nice game!

Another automatic click script, clicking the buttons only when necessary:

var checkAll = setInterval(function() { var bn = ['stoke','gather','traps']; for (var i=0; i<bn.length;i++) $('#'+bn[i]+'Button:not(.disabled)').click(); }, 500);

jmuguy 13 years ago |

Hmm, it would nice to know what the items from the workshop do. WTB leather.

KennyCason 13 years ago |

Lol played through 2 full times hoping it wasn't just in repeat haha

MrBra 13 years ago |

is this just some js and jquery or there is more behind it? browser db? angular js? I am not familiar with those technologies so I can't be sure I can recognize them, so please just answer...

egypturnash 13 years ago | |

Have you looked at the source?

  <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
  <script src="lib/jquery.color-2.1.2.min.js"></script>
  <script src="script/Button.js"></script>
  <script src="script/engine.js"></script>
  <script src="script/header.js"></script>
  <script src="script/notifications.js"></script>
  <script src="script/events.js"></script>
  <script src="script/room.js"></script>
  <script src="script/outside.js"></script>
  <script src="script/world.js"></script>
  <script src="script/path.js"></script>
  <script src="script/ship.js"></script>
  <script src="script/space.js"></script>
  <!-- Event modules -->
  <script src="script/events/global.js"></script>
  <script src="script/events/room.js"></script>
  <script src="script/events/outside.js"></script>
  <script src="script/events/encounters.js"></script>
  <script src="script/events/setpieces.js"></script>

With the exception of the two minimized libraries, none of this code is obfuscated in the least. It even has comments in it!

MrBra 13 years ago | | |

Yes, just looking at the html page source is what I did, but then at first sight I couldn't tell if those other .js where part of a known modular js framework or not, since as I said I am not familiar with those.

comet 13 years ago |

Wow.. This is poetic.. It didn't feel like a game but a story I was part of. I'm still stroking the fire, gathering wood, and the checking the traps. Just beautiful. Thank you! :)

Zikes 13 years ago |

This seems like it could make for a fairly successful mobile game.

ISL 13 years ago |

Is there a way to pause?

andyjsong 13 years ago | |

It save by itself. So you can close the window and walk away if you'd like. Just don't clear your cookies.

ISL 13 years ago | | |

It saves, but, especially early on, there's a sense that you might get eaten if you walk away from the computer.

whathappenedto 13 years ago |

I played through the whole game but can't figure out what bait was ever used for. My trapped made it but there didn't seem to be any use for it. Anyone know?

sirsar 13 years ago | |

Baited traps are "better." I think they attract more animals.

alexkehayias 13 years ago |

Dammit I've been playing this for 2 hours straight...

scotty79 13 years ago |

I hate when game makes me wait to click things. That makes me semi-immune to Zynga-type pestilence but makes it hard to find fun thing to play.

gcatalfamo 13 years ago |

I started playing on my nexus and now, with over 60 villagers, I'd like to move my game on the pc. Anyway I could export my game state?

msohcw 13 years ago | |

Copy paste the game state from localstorage.

omegant 13 years ago | | |

How?

Ashuu 13 years ago |

Is there any way of saving the game like Candy Box?

PavlovsCat 13 years ago | |

It autosaves to cookies every now and then (it flashes "saving" in the top right corner when it does)

dantheman 13 years ago |

This game is great, I'm really enjoying it.

mihaifm 13 years ago |

it seems to have a bug...if you close and revisit the page again, all the timers are reset...so you can gather stuff instantly

cosx 13 years ago | |

You can always just do this as well.

State.stores.wood = 99999; State.stores["alien alloy"] = 99999; State.stores["laser rifle"] = 1

World.water = 60; Path.outfit["energy cell"] = 80; Path.outfit["cured meat"] = 40; Path.outfit["grenade"] = 10

vog 13 years ago |

It seems to run on Chrome but not on Firefox. If that is on purpose, it should be clearly stated as such at the beginning.

robin_reala 13 years ago | |

I've been playing it for a week in Firefox, no problems.

anonymous 13 years ago | |

Works for me, firefox 21 on Linux.

mathattack 13 years ago |

Wow - can I have my evening and morning back?

anigbrowl 13 years ago |

I'm hooked.

phragg 13 years ago |

Fun but easily hacked if you change the class in DevTools to not be disabled, then click click clickity.

ralfd 13 years ago | |

Isn't every javascript game easily hacked?

benregenspan 13 years ago | | |

It can be made a decent amount more difficult with some simple changes like obfuscating the source and also encapsulating all the object definitions and state in a closure, instead of putting it all in global variables. Of course I think that would violate the minimal spirit of the game and it's really cool to be able to see its source so easily.

larkarvin 13 years ago |

took me 3 hrs to finish! but a really great game nonetheless. I enjoyed every part of it. kudos!

srikarg 13 years ago |

Amazing game! Thanks for sharing.

Splendor 13 years ago |

Well...there went six hours.

Rustan 13 years ago |

Played, donated. Thanks!

parsabg 13 years ago |

just putting this here :) setInterval(function(){$("#trapsButton,#gatherButton").trigger('click')}, 2000);

thealistra 13 years ago |

this game has the timers for activities so long, that I worry that it'll start offering me in-app purchases any time soon

m-r-r 13 years ago |

Wow. This game is really addictive.

sarquah 13 years ago |

Great game. I'm having fun

ssyphon 13 years ago |

How can I save for real? :S

ssyphon 13 years ago | |

Nevermind, Im opting to see this out until the end.

mavlee 13 years ago |

does anyone know what to do with alien alloy?

saraid216 13 years ago | |

There's a fourth "area" (Room | Village | Path) you can get after you explore a whole bunch. The alien alloy is used there.

Perrydu 13 years ago |

refreshing page.. get more stuff..

frozenport 13 years ago |

Stroke fire takes too long. After waiting for the first one and getting a second wait, I quit. You should make it faster until you have acclimated the user to the slow pace.

x1024 13 years ago | |

Alternatively, you should have an attention span not measured in seconds.

frozenport 13 years ago | | |

Thats mean! I was merely saying the opening needs to first 'earn' the right for my attention. I am surprised that you can get down-voted for suggestions.

gnosis 13 years ago |

Unfortunately, this game seems to be browser-based and requires javascript to work -- so I'm going to pass.

lucisferre 13 years ago | |

I'm starting to feel like no-javascript-guy is some type of HN novelty account. Seriously man, not a single person here cares that you don't use javascript. Move on.

Dylan16807 13 years ago | | |

I strongly disagree. Gnosis is being ridiculous here in complaining that something interactive needs code, but it's equally ridiculous for non-interactive pages to need javascript. I've seen pages with the entire content in the html, set to invisible, that needed javascript to turn the text black. That is shameful web development. It shouldn't take 10 billion clock cycles to make the page appear. Html, css, javascript, they each have their own jobs, and it's valid to complain when someone does it wrong.

But again, it's only valid to complain about/mock javascript on non-interactive pages like blogs.

purplelobster 13 years ago | | |

I care slightly, because it's such a very strange stance to have. I just can't understand this aversion to js. Do they want the browser to just display html forever? Go back to the way things were? Do they actually think that will happen? When the browser is _the_ application platform, what will they do?

sillysaurus 13 years ago | | |

As a game developer, I care. Any sign that my potential audience is cut by a technology choice I make is valuable information to me.

gnosis 13 years ago | | |

If no one cares, why are there dozens of replies to this thread?

More to the point, if at least you didn't care, then why did you comment?

Why didn't you "just move on"?

saraid216 13 years ago | | |

Hey! Hey guys! I don't use Facebook! Aren't you proud of me!?

unimpressive 13 years ago | |

I use noscript, and am continually annoyed by web pages that feel they need to run code on my computer to load. I get it when people complain about things needlessly using Javascript.

With that in mind, what the hell were you expecting? Even in the 90's web based games used flash. What exactly was the 'secure' alternative? A game needs to run code, whether natively or in your browser.

gnosis 13 years ago | | |

Have you ever heard of games that don't run within web browsers?

That's what I thought this particular game might be.

In fact, there is a slew of standalone, non-browser-based Interactive Fiction game engines like Frotz[1], Zoom[2], and Inform7[3] out there that this particular game might have been written in. And I would have had no problem playing it then.

[1] - http://frotz.sourceforge.net/

[2] - http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/

[3] - http://inform7.com/

anigbrowl 13 years ago | |

Get a burner machine or something. I've yet to have a js-based security problem.

gnosis 13 years ago | | |

"I've yet to have a js-based security problem."

You mean you have yet to become aware that your browser has been owned through some Javascript exploit.

Somehow that isn't very comforting to me.

Aardwolf 13 years ago | |

Didn't making your post also require a browser?

You prefer running a binary to play a game?

gnosis 13 years ago | | |

No. I prefer open source games. You are aware that they exist outside of web browsers, aren't you?

otter_pop_one 13 years ago | |

"Didn't like the font choice."