Browzings: A Dark Room and candybox - or: Text-based games are basically work, right?

If, like me, you find yourself at work with a few minutes to spare (or hours of downtime, in some cases), you might have considered playing games in-browser. There are sometimes significant chunks of my day where I'm waiting for stuff to happen, and while some people might consider this freeing, other, less optimistic people would (rightly) surmise that it soon gets really bloody boring. After reading every news, magazine and blog article on the entire internet, I started playing Facebook Apps and games on Kongregate, but quickly realised that no-one catching me unawares could fail to notice that I wasn't compiling a report and that I was, in fact, piloting a miniature spacetank or madly blasting rainbow-coloured bubbles out of a cannon.

Some people might have stopped attempting to play games at work after this somewhat troubling revelation. "I'm getting paid to be here; maybe I should stop dicking around and make myself useful?" I imagine them asking themselves, their little hearts plagued with doubt. You know what I call these chumps? Quitters. Anything is possible with a little imagination. With a bit of digging around, I came across some neat, text-based adventure games that seemed to fit the bill: I could play them without it being obvious that I was doing so, and I could leave them running while doing other stuff if necessary. (Disclaimer: I don't advocate booting these up if you're a firefighter or heart surgeon, obvs. If, however, the alternative is staring at the clock and contemplating the futility of life, I say: go nuts! Because a watched clock never ticks.)

This is the poorest you will ever be in candybox. Savour it.

My first port of call was candybox. Innocuous enough at first glance, this clever little game accelerates exponentially - and best of all, it can be left running in the background if you actually need to do some work with no ill consequences. Although it starts out looking fairly plain, however, as the game progresses it does start to look slightly less like something you should be doing at work (various ASCII art pops up all over). The candy management and questing sections of the game give it a good amount of mileage, and the tongue-in-cheek humour keeps it feeling light throughout (not that you'd expect a game about collecting candies to be particularly dark). The option to save your game is hugely welcome - just save your unique link and it can be played from any browser. This is especially handy for me as my downtime comes when I'm using a communal PC. It also means I can play on my laptop at home if I begin to crave sweet candy goodness.

So many options, so little time.

Visually similar, but tonally very different, is A Dark Room. As with candybox, your options are initially limited and grow based on your actions. Yet A Dark Room manages to achieve an entirely different feel, due in no small part to the narration along the side of the screen. It eschews the lighthearted humour of the previous game, instead painting a vivid picture of the environment by describing each action you take. As such, it has the feel of a traditional text-based adventure game - in the beginning, at least. The only downside is the lack of ability to save your game - if you start on one PC, you'll have to continue on the same PC, and if you're using Incognito mode or InPrivate Browsing, your game data won't save at all. This could be a dealbreaker for some, but if you haven't already guessed from the above, my browsing is pretty much unpoliced. Score!


It's difficult to say very much about either of these without giving away what makes them so intriguing - and, for me, addictive. Suffice to say, both candybox and A Dark Room offer much more depth and reward than their starting screens would have you believe. Both of the games reward patience and draw the player in with the addition of new gameplay mechanics at various intervals. At work or otherwise, head over and prepare for those hours of purposeless browsing to get

A LOT

MORE

EPIC.