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A Dark Room

Starts as one button beside a dying fire and quietly becomes something much larger. Best played without reading anything about it first.

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How to get the most from it

A Dark Room sits in Text Adventures under Play, filed as rabbit hole.

  • Open it when the evening is free. It has no natural stopping point.
  • It works on a phone or a desktop, so open it on whatever is nearest.
  • It works with the sound off, so it is fine on a train or in a quiet office.
  • No account needed — you can start without signing up.
  • Go in expecting something mesmerising, clever and unsettling.

About this category: Interactive fiction, MUDs and choose-your-path stories. Some are forty years old and still better written than most things released this year.

Good for

  • A long evening with nothing planned
  • Watching something hypnotic for a while
  • Being impressed by a clever idea
  • A little creeping unease
  • A quiet break at your desk
  • Killing time on your phone
  • Trying it with zero commitment

A Dark Room: quick answers

Is A Dark Room free?

Yes. A Dark Room is free to use and needs no account.

Do I need an account to use A Dark Room?

No. You can use A Dark Room without signing up for anything.

Does A Dark Room work on a phone?

Yes. A Dark Room works on phones as well as desktop browsers.

Is A Dark Room safe for work?

Yes, we file it as safe for work. It also works muted.

How long does A Dark Room take?

We file it as "Rabbit hole": Clear your evening. We warned you.

More in Text Adventures

All 17 in Text Adventures
  • Enormous free MUD with hundreds of areas and a browser client, so you can be killed by a wandering mob without installing anything.

  • Text MUD running continuously since 1997, with a player-run economy, real politics and a genuinely intimidating combat system.

  • Free MUD with multiclassing, a web client and a player base that has been levelling the same characters since the nineties.

  • Long branching novels where your stats matter and the prose does not embarrass itself; a good number play free in the browser.

Same mood: mesmerising

All mesmerising sites

Keep exploring

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