A Dark Room vs Wasteland 1: The Original Classic
A Dark Room
A Dark Room is a text-based, story-rich and a very intriguing RPG that has taken the world by storm mainly because the impressive depths it provides with minimalistic resources (i.e. texts). Although you start off the game simply stoking a fire, the game eventually adds in other elements such as resources (wood, obviously) in which you use to stoke your fire with as well as the other characters who will want to share the warmth of your bonfire and eventually, once they are feeling better, help you to the best of their abilities. The game also allows you to travel to different locations, such as the Silent Forest, to gather wood or check traps.In many ways, A Dark Room may remind the older gamers of the time when the internet has not really gone mainstream yet. These are the sort of fun story-based games that are circulating around back then. If you enjoy a good story, this is a game you'll want to play. It's completely free after all!
Wasteland 1: The Original Classic
Wasteland 1: The Original Classic is the father of modern post-apocalyptic RPGs and rightfully so. Set in the year 2087 after an all-out nucler war, the game lays out the precedence for games like the very first Fallout game. In fact, from the game itself, you can see some of the similarities. That said, Wasteland 1 is a lot more old-school than Fallout 1 and hence, there are plenty more undesirable aspects, bugs and glitches that may make anyone albeit a hardcore fan to throw up their hands in despair.Nevertheless, Wasteland 1 is still a classic in many ways. It is possibly among the first games with a consequence-driven reactive world, for instance, and it has a party-based system allowing you to recruit people to help you on your quest to find out what's threatening the very survival of the remnants of humanity aside from the usual roving mutants and raiders.
Despite the novelty, we honestly wouldn't recommend Wasteland 1 to anyone who has not played the game before when it was first released... back when games were still primarily text-based. Instead, if you'd like to experience a much better and advanced version of Wasteland 1, you should get Wasteland 2.