THE DARK ROOM

DEVELOPER STIRFIRE STUDIOS • RELEASE EARLY ACCESS • PRICE US$ 14 www.thejohnrobertson.com/thedarkroom/

The Dark Room is the stern scolding we all deserve. For older gamers, like me, who have grown soft, feasting on morsels of modern design. For new gamers, who have never known endlessly, meaninglessly, unfairly starting over. For the gamer sitting next to me, wincing as I make choices. For the man, in the other seat next to me, who was merely in Melbourne to see his favourite horse win a race. “I have a friend who might play DOTA, I think. Do you know that one?” I mean, yes, but not really. As he watches me play, he seems to oscillate between abject confusion and physical pain.

And so, I find myself traveling home from another PAX Australia, dying during character creation, red-faced with humiliation and pique. I’m later forced to choose ‘brightness’; my IQ or my screen, and I know one will kill me. I feel like I probably know which one, but I’ve come so far, like when King’s Quest V wouldn’t save to C: and I had to complete it, eventually, carefully, in one session. I start solving The Dark Room using memory and process of elimination. I can see structure; dead ends, deaths and an elusive ‘correct path’ behind my eyelids if I close my eyes real tight.

Somehow, I unwillingly unlock ‘hard mode’ and am then playing, from the start, all over again, with no text on screen, recalling the prior positions of safe responses as if this were a mad game of Simon Swipe. My memory fails, I select the blue option and am inexplicably told, “Oh, go fluff yourself, Darren, it’s not 2007.” Well you know what? Fluff this game. It’s trying so hard to be a hardcore text adventure and teach everyone a lesson, when it’s actually one of the most clever, hilarious and innovative takes on the genre I’ve ever seen. I suspect the designers know this and it’s killing them.