This game is insane...its been a journey
Before playing this game I read the reviews, and I noticed there were a lot of little implications that "ADR" was going to ask me to consider the darker side of my own human nature. I was curious to see what everyone was referring to, so I purchased the game. Honestly, I expected to affirm to myself that I am a little kinder than the archetypical-purely-human-nature-driven greedy individual. I did not expect to do much, if any, reflecting. I intended to play ADR in such a way that would, in the end, allow me to feel "above" its critique of human nature, by refusing to make any morally wrong or inhumane decisions along the way. I did not expect this to be difficult (after all, its just a text based game...) but I was wrong. Along the way, this game forced me to consider that I caused some pretty disgusting situations to happen in the ADR world, even though I had good intentions. When I saw these resulting terrible situations, I realized all of them were preventable, and I was faced with a choice of either re-setting the game: thus throwing away all the long hours of repetitive, minute work I had put in; or accepting the consequences of the actions Id already taken, and trying really hard not to make any more poor slippery slope decisions that would make the ADR world an even worse place. This proved difficult, progress is painfully slow the honest way. The righteous way is absolutely the harder way in ADR and in life. The righteous way of making progress doesnt feel worth it, when the way you know is evil goes 50 times faster. I slowly became more willing to lower my moral standards just a little, to save myself some time, but things got worse and worse, and I regretted many of the moral compromises I made almost immediately. I really struggled, on a personal level, with all the things my character had done and was still doing in ADR, and at several points I considered quitting the game (after reading the text descriptions of things my character was doing, I didnt think finishing this game was worth putting myself in this role) But all the work I had done kept me moving through it, and I decided evil or not I would see it through. There were a few moral thresholds I knew were obviously wrong to cross, and I vowed not to touch them at any point in ADR. I thought my restraint in these areas would help me feel better about some of the selfish choices I did make, but upon reaching the the first run through ending of ADR, I read the text Amir wrote, and I realized that when it comes to your principles, crossing some big lines is just as evil as crossing all of them. The second time I played this game through, I prevented outcomes that I knew would cause morally wrong situations by ignoring all of the shortcuts in this game, and doing everything the hard way, myself. I realized that many things I thought I "needed" to finish ADR the first time through, were vain comforts that I avoided being wasteful for the second time through. Reaching the second ending (after doing things the right way) was both humbling, because it had taken so much longer, and very powerful, because of the message Amir leaves us. ADR was a much bigger journey than I expected. 5 stars
DelaneyNBrown about
A Dark Room, v2.33