Dark Mode is a minimal meditation on the rogue-like / adventure game genre, stripped to its bare essentials: a labyrinth, varied “encounters”, and numerical stats. What is the minimum necessary to conjure a sense of adventure?
Dark Mode represents something of an exercise in interactive concrete poetry – spatialised, minimal narrations that must be sought out within the literal space of the text. It was inspired by pioneering gaming titles like Maze War (1973) and Rogue (1980), staging a consciously enigmatic celebration of these early instances, whose economy of expression is their chief characteristic—and, today, a continuing source of appeal.
You can explore the piece at itch.io. Plays with sound.