Games Like A Dark Room: Incrementals That Tell a Story
Updated October 2, 2026
The short answer
A Dark Room tells its story through what unlocks: a new button, a new stranger, a new line of text. If you want that again, start with Candy Box 2, which is free in a browser and makes you buy its own interface one piece at a time. If you want more story and fewer numbers, play Clickolding. If you want the reverse, play Your Chronicle.
The six below are grouped by how much of each game is story and how much is number, because that ratio is what decides whether you will like it after A Dark Room.
Updated September 2026.
What does A Dark Room actually do?
An incremental game is a game built around numbers that grow faster than you can spend them: you buy something that makes more of the resource, which buys more of that thing, until the scale changes and new systems appear. The longer version is in what an incremental game is.
A Dark Room, first released in browsers by Doublespeak Games on 10 June 2013, hides a story inside that loop. Wikipedia’s summary covers the opening: you light a fire in a cold room, a stranger stumbles in, and from there you gather wood, build a village, and eventually take a compass out into a wasteland. Nothing is explained. The story is in the order things appear and in the short lines of text that come with them, and it ends on a reveal I will not spoil here.
It is short. HowLongToBeat puts the main story at 3.8 hours (as of September 2026). The free browser version is still up, and a Steam version costs $6.99 (as of September 2026).
The six, at a glance
The best single pick is Candy Box 2: same year, same trick, and free. Clickolding is the one to play tonight. Crank is the least known and the closest in structure.
| Game | Story or number? | How the story arrives | Where to play | Price (as of September 2026) | HowLongToBeat main story (as of September 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clickolding | Mostly story | A masked man’s instructions, in one hotel room | Steam (Windows) | $2.99 | 0.8 hours |
| The Longing | Mostly story | A 400-day clock that runs while the game is closed | Steam | $14.99 | 16.3 hours |
| Crank | Even split | First-person log entries between upgrades | Browser | Free | Not listed |
| Candy Box 2 | Even split | You buy the interface, then a map of the world | Browser | Free | 4.3 hours |
| The Gold Factory | Mostly number | Side jobs, ciphers, and places under the ground | Browser | Free | Not listed |
| Your Chronicle | Mostly number | Over 3,000 story actions and multiple endings | Steam | Free, with in-app purchases | Not listed |
“Not listed” means HowLongToBeat has no main-story time on record for that game.
Which ones are mostly story?
Clickolding
Clickolding is the most story per minute on this list, and the darkest. Its Steam page calls it “a dark incremental narrative game about thumbing a tally counter to satisfy the distressing masked man sitting in the corner of your hotel room”. The counter is the number that goes up; the man, and what he tells you between clicks, is the game.
It is by Strange Scaffold, costs $2.99, runs on Windows only, and HowLongToBeat’s main-story time is 0.8 hours (all as of September 2026). Know that it goes somewhere heavy: according to its Wikipedia entry, a gun comes out near the end. If A Dark Room’s late turn was the part you liked, this is that turn stretched over a whole game.
The Longing
The Longing gives you the least number and the most waiting. You play a Shade left to guard a sleeping king, and, per its Steam page, the game “inevitably counts down the 400 days”, and it keeps counting after you exit. You can wander a hand-drawn cave, collect things for your room, or have the Shade read classic literature “from Nietzsche to Moby Dick”, and the story moves at the speed of the clock.
It is the least “incremental” game here. There is no production chain, only one counter that runs whether you play or not. Reading or decorating at home makes it run a little faster, and that is as close as it gets to an upgrade. What it shares with A Dark Room is the reveal by unlock: the store page lists time-based puzzles, well hidden secrets and various endings, so the world keeps opening up the longer the clock runs. It costs $14.99 and HowLongToBeat counts 16.3 hours of actual play (both as of September 2026), spread across more than a year of calendar time.
Which ones split it evenly?
Crank
Crank is the closest to A Dark Room in shape, and the one to hand someone who has already played Candy Box 2. It is a free browser game, and its first screen could almost be A Dark Room’s: “Everything is dark. There is a small handcrank nearby. It looks stiff, but still operational.”
You turn the crank for power, build CrankBots to turn it for you, repair a computer out of scrap, and eventually leave with a jump drive. Between upgrades, short first-person log entries explain who you are and why you are out there, and that story does not come out where the opening suggests. Its IncrementalDB listing tags it as finished, with an ending and no prestige, so it is a game you complete rather than keep.
Candy Box 2
Candy Box 2 is the best pick overall. It came out on 24 October 2013, the same year as A Dark Room, and it is the sequel to the game Wikipedia credits with inspiring Cookie Clicker. You start with a candy counter going up by one per second. Then you spend candies to “request a new feature to the developer”, and the game hands you a status bar, a settings tab, a save tab, a health bar, and finally a map.
That map is where the story lives: a village, a forge, a lollipop farm, a desert fortress, a castle, and further. The jokes are in the ASCII art and the item descriptions. HowLongToBeat puts a main run at 4.3 hours (as of September 2026), close to A Dark Room’s, on a small sample of five submissions. It is free at candybox2.github.io.
Which ones are mostly number?
The Gold Factory
The Gold Factory was made in the wake of these two, and its IncrementalDB entry says so: “inspired by Candy Box and A Dark Room.” You work in a factory that pays you gold bars every second, and the rest of the game is the things you buy with them. Your boss pays extra if you kill the rats that get in at night or crack the coded messages he is too busy to solve.
The story is thinner than in the four above. What it has instead is discovery: a shovel leads to a hole, the hole leads to an underground world, and the game keeps finding new rooms to put behind a price. It is free in the browser, and IncrementalDB lists it as having no ending, so decide in advance when you will stop.
Your Chronicle
Your Chronicle is the pick for someone who liked A Dark Room’s village phase and wanted it to go on for months. Its Steam page calls it a text-based idle RPG with “more than 3,000 unique story actions”, starting in a village where your father tells you to “be strong, and save your mother.”
It is free (as of September 2026), with in-app purchases and a paid artwork add-on, and it has multiple endings that depend on your choices. The trade-off is the ratio: the story is spread thin across dungeons, summoned monsters and automation, so you will read far more numbers than sentences. It has 2,730 Steam reviews (as of September 2026).
If you want more of A Dark Room itself
The same world continues in The Ensign, which its Steam page calls a pre-sequel to A Dark Room. It is a harsh, death-heavy text adventure rather than an incremental game, so it is not in the table, but it explains how things got the way they were. It costs $6.99 (as of September 2026).
If what you liked was a small game hiding a much bigger one, games like Universal Paperclips sorts that trick by how the reveal happens, and Spaceplan, the other famous story clicker, is in that list. If you want games that finish, idle games that actually end is sorted by length. For something as short as Clickolding, see games for 30-minute sessions.
Where our game fits
Our own game, Sam, We Talked About This, sits next to this list rather than on it. It is an idle incremental game: you scrape whatever the internet has, train text, image and video models on it, win subscribers, and turn the cash into more disks, bigger machines and a bigger crew, until the loop reaches AGI. The difference is the story. Everything here tells one through what unlocks; ours has a premise, not a narrative, so there is no plot waiting behind the next button. It is unreleased, coming to Steam in Q1 2027, with nothing to play yet. The Steam page for Sam, We Talked About This is where it will be.
Quick answers
Is A Dark Room free? Yes, in a browser at adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com. The Steam version costs $6.99 (as of September 2026) and adds an enhanced interface, modding and developer commentary, per its store page.
What is the closest game to A Dark Room? Candy Box 2. Both came out in 2013, both open on almost nothing, and both reveal a map and a story through what you unlock. Crank is the closest in structure, with its dark opening and first-person log.
How long does A Dark Room take to beat? About 3.8 hours for the main story on HowLongToBeat (as of September 2026). Much of that is waiting on resources, so it fits comfortably into two or three short sittings.
Are there story incremental games on Steam? Yes: Clickolding, The Longing and Your Chronicle are all on Steam, and so is A Dark Room itself. Candy Box 2, Crank and The Gold Factory are browser only and free.
Key takeaways
- A Dark Room delivers its story through unlocks, so judge its successors on how much story versus how much number they give you.
- Candy Box 2 is the best single pick; Clickolding is the most story in the least time.
- Crank, The Gold Factory and Your Chronicle are the less familiar names, worth trying once Candy Box 2 is done.
- The Longing is only barely an incremental game, and it is here for the way time unlocks its world.
