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DarkPattern.games: Find Healthy Mobile Games

403 points by homarp 5y ago

copperwater69 5y ago
I used to play team fortress 2. In TF2 whenever you hit an enemy a bell is rung. I remember laying in bed one night and all I could hear was that bell ringing and I felt like one of pavlovs dogs.
- dawnerd 5y ago
  I believe thats an option to disable, but it's just too helpful to not have.
  - Fernicia 5y ago
    Unless they've changed it, the default is that it's off.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  When I was a kid, I played bomberman too much with some friends one summer. Going to sleep, I had the levels blinking through my eyes for 20 minutes before my mind could finally find some rest.
  - jwdunne 5y ago
    Happened to me with both Bejewelled and Candy Crush. I went to sleep with jewels and candies moving around and matching up. That’s where I drew the line.
  - lurker619 5y ago
    Happened to me with FIFA in college. I could see balls passing and common patterns of crosses/attacks/corners playing on the back of my eyelids. I realized I had drilled the football patterns into my neurons.
  - PebblesRox 5y ago
    This has happened to me with Roller Coaster Tycoon (laying out the paths in particular), and for a non-digital example, jigsaw puzzles. I also have Minecraft dreams if I've been playing a lot.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  That's not really considered a dark pattern, seems like an auditory "tetris effect"
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  If this is considered a dark pattern, you could consider almost anything that makes a game enjoyable to be a dark pattern. Because, y'know, a really enjoyable game might make you think about it at other times! You might even feel like going back to the game and playing it, because you enjoy it so much! "Wow, the controls in this game are really tight, it feels amazing to play...nice try, Miyamoto, you won't get me this time!" *chucks Switch out the window*
  - nouveaux 5y ago
    I think there is a more genuine take. The bell is not what makes TF2 enjoyable. The fact that GP is thinking about the bell instead of his game session brings into question whether or not it's a dark pattern.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      Hard disagree. I mean, it's only one tiny part of the game, but sound design is a big part of what makes weapons feel 'chunky' or powerful or satisfying, and it sounds like this is similar. With the other part being that the distinct sound is useful from a gameplay transparency perspective, it means players are very aware when their shots land or not. I played a lot of Overwatch for a while, and it had some similar sound design IIRC.
      - nouveaux 5y ago
        I agree that sounds and details play an important part of the game and there are sounds that are quite famous (Mario). I am merely saying that it not u reasonable to be question whether or not sounds can be a dark pattern. I didn't draw any conclusions myself.
        TulliusCicero 5y ago
        > I didn't draw any conclusions myself. Yes, you did: > The bell is not what makes TF2 enjoyable. But yeah I otherwise agree.
- iaml 5y ago
  Blizzard one-upped them by playing a reversed and tweaked sound of opening a beer on hitting the enemy.
csours 5y ago
Rule 1 of picking mobile games: If it's "free" and is sponsoring a YouTube video, or if it's advertised in another mobile game, or if it advertised in the store, DON'T PLAY IT, because it is not a game! I wish the stores had an "In Game Currency" filter, not just "In App Purchases".
spamtarget 5y ago
This is really great. Is there something similar to non-gaming software?
- fire 5y ago
  I believe https://www.darkpatterns.org/ https://www.darkpatterns.org/ is a general Dark Patterns site
kant_adorn_arts 5y ago
What a great website. I'd been thinking of how to find such info. We buy lots of kids games, and this is a great 'cheat sheet'. It is great that you spell out the dark patterns. Who reviews the games? Upfront, it seems like they have done an excellent job.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
Why I love retro DOS and Window games. Basically none of this nonsense.
dang 5y ago
One past discussion: Show HN: Dark Patterns in Game Design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20953553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20953553 - Sept 2019 (8 comments)
awelxtr 5y ago
With free games it would be easier to put a list of games without dark patterns.
mdrzn 5y ago
After a quick skimming of both dark and non-dark pattern games, seems that most of the dark pattern ones are free with in-app purchases, while the non-dark pattern games are priced at a couple dollars, sometimes with zero in app purchases. Different revenue models.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  A while back I tried to find some good rhythm games for mobile, and they seemed to fall into two categories: * Unpolished games with more limited and/or less interesting content that you could buy for a straight fee * Fun-looking, polished games with songs I wanted to try that were filled with energy systems and ways to get you to spend money forever and ever
  - jamesgeck0 5y ago
    osu!stream is a pretty good free one on iOS, but unfortunately they're done updating it.
thenerdhead 5y ago
So this can help parents and kids with mobile games, but let’s talk about the elephant in the room of the games we ourselves are addicted to or our kids keep coming back to play. When I was a teen I was addicted to World of Warcraft. I played for a few years before quitting. My grades dropped, my social life was hurting, and all for just in game items? I remember how worried my parents were about my screen time and the lengths they went to try and limit it. Some of my best friends continue to play to this day and keep telling me that they are bored with it and will quit next expansion. They are now re-playing the same game over like they did with me a decade ago as it’s now a “classic” version. How do we help people get help they desire when these games create almost a combative, intervention needed type of situation? There’s https://www.restartlife.com/ https://www.restartlife.com/ and other similar types of websites out there to help, but I feel like the problem is the dark patterns already have a hold on one’s behavior to the point where only that person can be the agent of change or a major event happens in their life to spark the change.
- Bancakes 5y ago
  You can't think in interventions. A person has to realise their way of life objectively and feel they are making a mistake. They don't feel WoW is a waste of time. Same thing with weight loss.
  - thenerdhead 5y ago
    It was used in reference to a friend who has told me countlessly that they want to quit but they don't know how. I also ran into this as a teen but "woke" up from it when going to college.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Reminds me of the studies with drug addiction and rats. IIRC some of the early studies about how certain drugs were so addictive were done with rats who basically couldn't do anything else, and when you give the rats other things to do in their life, suddenly the drugs aren't as interesting. I think the fundamental thing about playing repetitive games like WoW forever is that the skinner box is more interesting than real life, which is more an indictment of their real life than the game. Not sure how to fix that, though, and certainly there are people who can enjoy MMO's in moderation.
k__ 5y ago
I always see cool ads for games that have nothing to do with the games I end up installing. Would be nice to find the real games, if they even exist.
lucideer 5y ago
Great website. I'll be using this. Two small bits of UI feedback: 1. It's not extremely clear that the search field is usable 2. Feature request (probably for medium term, I get this is a very new project): The 4 boxes up top giving a breakdown of different dark patterns is cool, but it would be cooler to filter granularly. e.g. some might not care too much to avoid such things as grinding or "complete the collection", but would still like to avoid others.
DavideNL 5y ago
Heh. So if you click the Apple icon, you get games that are NOT playable on Apple devices :S *confusing*
jiggunjer 5y ago
I'm pretty confident gaming addiction is a thing, but not sure how strong (in terms of studies/evidence) the correlation is with these dark patterns. My hypothesis is that certain personality types are just more susceptible to gaming addiction, regardless of patterns.
- elldoubleyew 5y ago
  I’ve always wondered if I have a “gaming addiction” I play league of legends at least 4 hours per day, sometimes 20+ hours. I am obsessed with learning all the intricacies and improving in the ELO-based ranking system. I still maintain a full time job as an SWE, a romantic relationship, and personal hygiene/diet. Admittedly LoL comes first before work for me, and can cause tension in my relationship at times. I know many men that have a very similar relationship with golf, but are they golf addicts?
  - meetups323 5y ago
    I don't think very many men play golf at least 4 hours every day. That's a full round of 18, every single day? And some days 5 full rounds? The exception would maybe be if they're working from the course (closing deals/making calls/etc.), but that's pretty different from your situation.
  - lapetitejort 5y ago
    You have a "gaming addiction" as much as some people have a "network television" addiction. Some people just like to experience a medium for several hours a day. Playing four hours of LoL is just as meaningless as watching four hours of TV. One is more stigmatized than the other (I'll give you a hint, the one where ads can be delivered on a regular schedule is the more acceptable one). And I'm willing to bet that if there's something you need to do that night, you could sacrifice one or two days to get things done and not feel any ill effects (and if I may rib on it a bit, probably feel much better having stepped away from LoL).
    - mkl95 5y ago
      This. Being an addict to "x" often depends on what relationship the average citizen is expected to have with "x". In a deeply religious society, reading and analyzing religious texts for hours every day may be seen as an average activity, while in a non religious society you may be seen as a lunatic. In most if not all societies, people are expected to work full time, but workaholism treatment centers are not particularly popular.
frankohn 5y ago
Games with dark patterns are an overwhelming majority on Android. That's sad because they abuse fragile people and children. That didn't had to be that way if Google didn't promote its ad-based revenue model for apps and games. To my eyes they are responsible for the current situation.
- brnt 5y ago
  Every time I open the app store on my Android phone, I am amazed at the utter drivel it presents me with. I guess that's the attention economy at work.
sorenn111 5y ago
Relevant plug for Lichess mobile app (I am not affiliated). It's a free chess app that allows for rated play against opponents. Tens of thousands of concurrent games. No ads or payments (I don't remember if I paid, but I would be happy to support). No bells, no whistles, just chess. I have a pseudo addictive personality and mobile phone games P2W have gotten me to shell out more than I'd care to admit. I've stopped playing all such mobile games and my "nicotine gum" game was getting back to my roots (elementary school chess team): mobile chess from Lichess.
- vesche 5y ago
  Lichess is amazing and I use it every day. Completely free, no ads, and runs 100% on donations. They publish their costs, it takes ~420K a year to keep Lichess running and the primary developer of Lichess takes home about ~56K a year. https://lichess.org/costs https://lichess.org/costs Anyone reading who loves Lichess consider becoming a patron - https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron
- Haydos585x2 5y ago
  You wouldn't have paid for Lichess but you can donate to keep the site alive (and get some neat wings). You can also view their costs over at https://lichess.org/costs https://lichess.org/costs
frankohn 5y ago
China is taking draconian measures to protect people from game addiction. While I generally don't agree with their politics I feel they are doing the right things to protect the society. I feel the occidental states are not doing enough to protect people from game addiction and protect children from tablet addiction and bad contents. These thing are slowly eroding our society and making people more miserable when they are not able to help themselves against all these forms of addiction.
- tifadg1 5y ago
  Are you referring to limiting online play time or were there other steps as well?
  - frankohn 5y ago
    I only know about limiting online games.
    - Kiro 5y ago
      China's video game regulator hasn't approved any new titles since July 2021. Sounds like an outright ban to me.
- finiteseries 5y ago
  Video games and tablets are not eroding our societies. Children’s usage of video games and tablets is their parents job, not the national government’s. I don’t know what country you’re in, but the thought of whoever is in control of mine “protecting” anyone from bad contents, let alone children, is enough to send chills down one’s spine. That is a blank check on info consumption and the sheer naivety required to entertain that idea for more than a second is bewildering.
  - seneca 5y ago
    Well said. I do think there is a place for state institutions to fund research and public-good marketing campaigns on these issues. Maybe to go so far as campaigns explaining these behaviors are unhealthy and potentially dangerous in optional school programs. In short, state intervention in child rearing, short of major abuse, should be limited to optional education.
BudaDude 5y ago
Great website ! I was surprised to not see Magic Arena on there .
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Wow, this site has a very low threshold for considering something a 'dark pattern'. If you look at the psychological section, these are all considered dark patterns: * A leveling up system * Badges/achievements * Collecting things * Getting better tools/equipment as the game progresses That's like...most games, I think? Most single-player games at least probably have at least one of those. edit: some of the examples listed here are hilarious > D4DJ Groovy Mix > "difficulty 1 through 14 is easy to learn and master, while 15 is the hardest difficulty in the game. makes people think that they have 90% of the skill of the best player but in reality it is not the case" > Magic: The Gathering Arena > "There are mysterious matchmaking algorithms. It isn't clear how these work. At face, they appear to match players of similar skill or deck strength."
- dmonitor 5y ago
  improving in skill creates investment in the game, which is apparently bad according to one of the bullet points. I like the concept and think this is a topic that deserves more attention, but the definition is broad to the point of meaninglessness
- brnt 5y ago
  I actually totally agree. For way longer than I should have did I avoid RPGs because of those systems, because they seemed a silly reduction of "progress". Now that I play RPGs, I still find them pointless annoyances that get in my way of enjoying the world/story. I still don't like that Steam added achievements to my games. I wish I could disable the entire "feature".
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    "I personally don't like this thing" isn't the same thing as "dark pattern." There are people like you that explicitly avoid RPG's, sure, and there are people who explicitly seek them out because they enjoy that part of the mechanics. Having 'levels' in games has been around for a long time, you can probably trace them back to the beginning days of D&D. Were the original D&D authors trying to get people addicted? Probably not, it was just something they thought players would like. And indeed, many players do.
saint_angels 5y ago
I think the website would be more useful, if you can select what patterns you personally consider "dark" and filter by those. For example, I don't consider "Variable Rewards" as a dark pattern and don't want it to affect game scores in a list.
- wantsanagent 5y ago
  Ironically variable reward schedules are the most powerful reward schedules for maintaining behavior in the absence of further rewards. I know you're not a rat/pidgeon but it's just funny you picked the one that classical behavioral psychology would say is close to the most influential.
  - p1necone 5y ago
    It's also crucial to some genres working at all though. Can you imagine a roguelike /without/ randomized loot?
yelling_cat 5y ago
Plenty of great word or number games only cost a couple of bucks to buy or remove ads on forever and have no other IAPs. Half of my family is obsessed with Wordsmyth at the moment. Most mobile action games are stuffed with dark patterns these days, but there are plenty of great ports with only one-time charges. Rockstar's ported Max Payne and most of their great PS2-era games: GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, Bully, Max Payne, etc.
banana_giraffe 5y ago
The two games I looked up have a handful of votes, but are wrong, or based on a optimistic view of a portion of the game. Which is to say, it feels like this site itself is being gamified to a degree. Fans of games will no doubt "vouch" for their favorite game, ignoring dark patterns unless they're severe.
- aeternum 5y ago
  It's a great idea but terrible UI. The sort needs to be different, a game with a single 5.0 rating should not appear above a game with 10,000 reviews but a 4.99 rating.
GuB-42 5y ago
Interesting how some "dark patterns", especially of the psychological kind, are actually important elements of good game design. For example the "illusion of control" (The game cheats or hides information to make you think you're better than you actually are) is everywhere, and it makes better games. One classic example is "coyote time" in platform games. Or for a more specific example, in Portal, at one time, you have to quickly fire a portal to avoid being crushed, it is a tense situation, and an important part of the story. So, to avoid a stupid death at the worst time, if you fire the wrong portal, it silently switches the other portal to correct your mistake. Aesthetic Manipulations (Trick questions or toying with emotions or our subconscious desires) is the entire point of many games. We want games to play with our emotions. Take a horror game for instance, you are sitting on a couch, at home, in the least scary environment you can imagine, the game has to pull all the trick on you if you want the scares you paid for. And no one is going to tell you that getting attached to characters is a bad thing and they would rather see them as the bunch of pixels they are. Frequency biases are all over the place too, usually in favor of the player. So much that when the game uses true randomness, it feels unfair. Good games are designed for player enjoyment, not to punish them with randomness. It also considers competition a dark pattern, are sports a dark pattern too?
- bduerst 5y ago
  Yeah, I looked up Dead Cells, and it lost points for being "too grindy", which is a big part of playing Rogue-likes.
  - glenstein 5y ago
    It's also a big indictment of them. I remember with Rogue Legacy, a game I was into for a time, a central debate about whether it was good or bad related to whether it was "too grindy", with some insisting it was (which was bad) and others insisting it wasn't (which is good!). And yet, whatever you call it, the grind, the accumulation of upgrades is central to the experience of the game.
  - Kaze404 5y ago
    Dead Cells is one of my favorite games but I would agree it's too grindy. In my opinion the game can be even more addicting by speeding up the rate at which the player unlocks new weapons. I started enjoying the game a lot more after installing a mod that makes things drop more cells. Edit: I forgot to mention that I don't think it's a dark pattern, just a relatively poorly balanced mechanic.
joeframbach 5y ago
Hilarious filter pattern in use in the top games list: https://www.darkpattern.games/games.php?alignment=dark https://www.darkpattern.games/games.php?alignment=dark. At the top is a "Filter by Platform" list which filters out, not in. I clicked the Android logo expecting, you know, to filter for Android. The resulting querystring when you click Android is "?alignment=dark&android=0". It literally filters out not in.
duxup 5y ago
I like this idea BUT... I feel like this is too much of boolean checkbox type situation. I play a game that is on the F2P model. You can play free and it's great. If you pay you get some advantages as far as progression goes and some vehicles that are better than free vehicles (sometimes...) but IMO ultimately it's the skill of the player that determines your experience. The game has the usual loot boxes and stuff I don't care for. I just don't do that stuff. I really like the game ... it plays well and I've no problem throwing a couple bucks their way from time to time. I've gotten more out of it than many $60 AAA titles. If I went by check boxes the game has everything I hate, and yet I really enjoy playing and don't have to do any of the 'dark pattern' stuff. It's just to binary to say "has X is Y bad".
kovek 5y ago
Reminds me of the games Buddha would not play
SethTro 5y ago
I hate absolute ratings (e.g. 5/5 with 1 vote being ranked higher than 4.99/5 with 100 votes). All the top games seem to have 1 report giving everything positive ratings so that other fabulous games with more ratings but say a 4.97 rating are lost. https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...
- null0pointer 5y ago
  3blue1brown has a great series of videos about how you should reason about these types of ratings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8idr1WZ1A7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8idr1WZ1A7Q
- selcuka 5y ago
  I believe computing (or even knowing about) the Wilson score is beyond the capabilities of your typical full-stack developer, but one could at least have the common sense to hide ratings until an item has a sufficient number of them (say, 10).
mmh0000 5y ago
I avoid all mobile games because they're, for the most part, just spyware. I read though this list hoping to find something, clicking a few random games, everything looks pretty similar: Data Linked to You The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Purchases Location Identifiers Diagnostics Other Data I'm sorry, but no. You do not need my location, identifies or other data. gtfo
cardosof 5y ago
Recently I've bought a Nintendo Switch because I've come to the realization that mobile games (I play on a high end tablet) are inferior. Why? Because most of then rely on dark patterns to get you watching ads or paying lots of money to roll chances like a casino. Console games are more likely to provide you a quality, limited time, instead of the opposite -infinite low quality time.
atum47 5y ago
This seems like a nice list to be on; how do I submit my game? It has no ads, no dark patterns... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.victorribeiro.qubes https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.victorribe... Android only for now, but an apple version could be arranged
user123456780 5y ago
You can see a correlation between healthy and unhealthy games in their icons. Ungealthy games are mostly high quality 'renders' for lack of a better term. The healthy games have a much less attention grabbing 'lower quality' icon.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  That observation suggests that if we want to improve player health, an effective place to start is to set up pro-bono or subsidized initiatives to create very high-quality, eye catching icons for the games recognized as healthy in order to help them compete. That's by no means an exhaustive solution - part of this is survivorship bias too. The devs are incentivized to invest in the dark pattern games that generate plenty of revenue for comparatively little effort and those investments include more frequent feature additions, bug fix and content updates. Services to buttress these offerings for healthy games would also be important.
hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
Some recommendations: If you enjoy Wizardry, there is a Japanese developer who developed a few WZ clones. Just search "Wizardry" in Google play and you should find it. It's called the "Wandroid" series. AFAIS the sales were decent (1K+ for the first game) for such a game. There are also mobile ports for classic games such as "Dungeon Master". But overall, I don't see Mobile as a healthy gaming platform.
Kiro 5y ago
I love grinding and found a lot of good games in the "Dark Games" section so thanks!
causality0 5y ago
You want healthy mobile games? Emulate console games from before consoles were online. There you go, thousands of games created purely to be games.
DaveSapien 5y ago
This is so much up my street its practically in my house! A few days ago, I just released a mobile game focused very much on the wellbeing of the player. It's called Kanso, And I'll be submitting it here for sure. Thank you very much for posting!!!!
autoexec 5y ago
Cool site! I wish there was a way to show games which are both free and healthy. I suspect it would be a small list, but still worth having.
user3939382 5y ago
I always wish the iOS app store had a search filter for “Free + No in—app purchases” plus all categories or specific e.g. Games.
- rexf 5y ago
  Free + No IAP sounds great for users, but it's completely unsustainable for developers. So don't expect any major updates over time.
  - user3939382 5y ago
    I’m a developer, I get it. However those apps do exist so their developers have already made that decision.
vesche 5y ago
I have tried a various many different types of mobile games on Android and have only ever held onto two mobile game apps: Lichess and Wordiest. Every other gaming app I have briefly tried (before uninstalling) has had one of these dark patterns: pay to win, invasive fullscreen video ads, daily play incentives, and/or incessant grind to complete never-ending objectives. It's unfortunate that there aren't more quality gaming apps on mobile.
- parentheses 5y ago
  lichess is so well made
- svachalek 5y ago
  The healthy games column on this site actually has some good recommendations. Lara Croft Go is so good, it's sad they don't make them like this anymore. Legends of Runeterra is really, really free to play. It has daily rewards, competition, and some other stuff this site calls dark patterns, but I've got close to everything (and there's a lot) in the game for free and never really felt pressured to pay money or even to play, which satisfies my personal sense of fairness. No ads either, they make their money selling cosmetic stuff. My go-to these days is board game apps. For the most part, they're very free of all this crap. Some great adaptations: Through the Ages, Scythe, Root, Wingspan, Concordia, Galaxy Trucker, Railroad Ink, Spirit Island. Spirit Island is at a higher price point than the rest, and tries to get you on a monthly subscription. But it's a fantastic board game.
guelo 5y ago
One of the worst parts of the walled garden app stores is how they control search to maximize their profits. Even when they are forced by regulation, for example to label apps with ads, you still can't search by that field.
activitypea 5y ago
Surprised Slay The Spire is on the nice list. It doesn't extract money but it's definitely designed to be addictive
rafael859 5y ago
This feels like a sort of granular MPAA/content rating but instead of movies it is for mobile games. Of course that is very valuable, and knowing that a particular game has certain attributes could help someone avoid it before they come across them while playing it (similar to how people approach content ratings and trigger warnings), but I don't think it makes sense to rank games based on that. I don't care to know what is the game with the fewest dark patterns, I care to know what is the best game that doesn't have that many (or particular ones that affect me). It looks like the data is there, so this is likely just an improvement on the presentation side. They seem to have coverage of around 50000* games which is very impressive, so perhaps at this point they should spend some time to make that data actually accessible. I would personally recommend https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ for similar purposes, even though it has a much smaller collection as it seems better curated and way easier on the eyes. *Edit: Scratch that, it looks like games after page 9 don't have ratings so it's more like 300 games total with a couple of reviews each.
yes_really 5y ago
> There are mysterious matchmaking algorithms. It isn't clear how these work. At face, they appear to match players of similar skill or deck strength. One of the dark patterns they found in Magic the Gathering Arena is "Illusion of Control" because they match players of similar skill or deck strength. I actually think it is a good thing they match games this way, and it seems like the website is just looking for things to complain about games.
outloudvi 5y ago
Well... it's a game, not a service with fixed features, so everything will make little sense if it brings no fun.
jaanak 5y ago
This is exactly the service what I been planning for the last two years.
p1necone 5y ago
This list seems pretty ridiculous to me. What they call dark patterns mostly just seem to be various things that make games more fun. My personal definition of dark patterns in games is basically anything that sacrifices fun, consistency of progression, consistency/believability of setting or suspension of disbelief in order to get people to pay more money. If you aren't sacrificing your vision to extract more money from consumers though, go nuts.
needle0 5y ago
What I find problematic with websites like this is that the whole thing is based on an implicit assumption that there is a universal "good" and "evil" (probably from an anglophone westerner point of view), with no regard for personal, regional, and cultural differences. Things are never that simple, and that assumption reeks of hubris.
- srcreigh 5y ago
  Relativism is a western concept
junon 5y ago
I've thought about making something like this for a while, happy to see it!
chalst 5y ago
I guessed as a grind-free roguelike, Hyperrogue must score highly [1]. Alas it is unreviewed [2]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432974 [2]: https://www.darkpattern.games/game/18554/0/hyperrogue.html https://www.darkpattern.games/game/18554/0/hyperrogue.html
- chalst 5y ago
  More obscure is King of Dragon Pass, which I've reviewed, giving it three dark patterns. https://www.darkpattern.games/game/3735/1/king-of-dragon-pass.html https://www.darkpattern.games/game/3735/1/king-of-dragon-pas...
cdubzzz 5y ago
This reminded about the “Go” games from Square Enix[0]. They are so fun. I wish they’d make more of them. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app-bundle/the-go-trilogy/id1181929904 https://apps.apple.com/us/app-bundle/the-go-trilogy/id118192...
wingerlang 5y ago
>> Competition - The game makes you compete against other players. PvP games are flagged as dark patterns by this..
Walton69 5y ago
[dead]
illuminati1911 5y ago
If this site is legit then this awesome. Mobile apps and games today are pretty much dead as far as iOS App store is concerned. 99% of new and featured apps and games are "free" and try to force you to either buy tokens or pay monthly fee or something as insane. Even the most trivial sports tracker (how many reps/minutes etc.) apps try to make you pay ridiculous monthly fee or sell "lifetime" license for several hundreds of USDs.
stavros 5y ago
This site has an interesting categorization system. I made https://nobsgames.stavros.io https://nobsgames.stavros.io a while back, and chose something slightly different (mostly based on the existence of in-game currency or pay-to-win). I don't know which system is better, but mine has worked very well for me, I've discovered some great games.
_pmf_ 5y ago
Obligatory plug for Simon Tatham's (the author of Putty) puzzle application.
jeswin 5y ago
Google bears huge responsibility for the decline in ethics here. They enabled this very explicitly via features on the App Store for Android. - There's no way to filter ad-free apps, and the app store is loaded with ad-ridden apps. I am totally willing to pay, but it's not easy any more to find ad-free, paid apps. - One time payment is mostly dead. I'd have loved it, even if it was a heftier initial amount. Instead we have in-app purchases and subscriptions. The problem with subscriptions is that now you've to get the user hooked on like with a drug, or they'll stop paying. Hence a lot of engineering is devoted to manipulating the user. As more apps went down this path, expectations were lowered, and developers slowly embraced shady practices for more "engagement".
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Just buy any Michael Brough game, for example Cinco Paus, and be done with it
arubania2 5y ago
I’m a bit disappointed that the website only focuses on the health aspect, and nothing more gaming related and in-depth, such as: - cheap enemy shots that are almost unavoidable based on reflexes alone, you need to know about them in advance and position yourself properly (Metal Slug games do this sometimes) - overly long boss fights where they have predictable and repeatable attacks, but huge HP pools and intend to wear the player down - intentionally sluggish controls, beyond what could be explained by poor programming; perhaps intended as a way of artificially increasing the difficulty Shouldn’t these be considered “dark pattens” too?

403 points by homarp 5y ago

I used to play team fortress 2. In TF2 whenever you hit an enemy a bell is rung. I remember laying in bed one night and all I could hear was that bell ringing and I felt like one of pavlovs dogs.

dawnerd 5y ago
I believe thats an option to disable, but it's just too helpful to not have.
- Fernicia 5y ago
  Unless they've changed it, the default is that it's off.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
When I was a kid, I played bomberman too much with some friends one summer. Going to sleep, I had the levels blinking through my eyes for 20 minutes before my mind could finally find some rest.
- jwdunne 5y ago
  Happened to me with both Bejewelled and Candy Crush. I went to sleep with jewels and candies moving around and matching up. That’s where I drew the line.
- lurker619 5y ago
  Happened to me with FIFA in college. I could see balls passing and common patterns of crosses/attacks/corners playing on the back of my eyelids. I realized I had drilled the football patterns into my neurons.
- PebblesRox 5y ago
  This has happened to me with Roller Coaster Tycoon (laying out the paths in particular), and for a non-digital example, jigsaw puzzles. I also have Minecraft dreams if I've been playing a lot.
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
That's not really considered a dark pattern, seems like an auditory "tetris effect"
TulliusCicero 5y ago
If this is considered a dark pattern, you could consider almost anything that makes a game enjoyable to be a dark pattern. Because, y'know, a really enjoyable game might make you think about it at other times! You might even feel like going back to the game and playing it, because you enjoy it so much! "Wow, the controls in this game are really tight, it feels amazing to play...nice try, Miyamoto, you won't get me this time!" *chucks Switch out the window*
- nouveaux 5y ago
  I think there is a more genuine take. The bell is not what makes TF2 enjoyable. The fact that GP is thinking about the bell instead of his game session brings into question whether or not it's a dark pattern.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Hard disagree. I mean, it's only one tiny part of the game, but sound design is a big part of what makes weapons feel 'chunky' or powerful or satisfying, and it sounds like this is similar. With the other part being that the distinct sound is useful from a gameplay transparency perspective, it means players are very aware when their shots land or not. I played a lot of Overwatch for a while, and it had some similar sound design IIRC.
    - nouveaux 5y ago
      I agree that sounds and details play an important part of the game and there are sounds that are quite famous (Mario). I am merely saying that it not u reasonable to be question whether or not sounds can be a dark pattern. I didn't draw any conclusions myself.
      - TulliusCicero 5y ago
        > I didn't draw any conclusions myself. Yes, you did: > The bell is not what makes TF2 enjoyable. But yeah I otherwise agree.
iaml 5y ago
Blizzard one-upped them by playing a reversed and tweaked sound of opening a beer on hitting the enemy.

csours 5y ago

Rule 1 of picking mobile games: If it's "free" and is sponsoring a YouTube video, or if it's advertised in another mobile game, or if it advertised in the store, DON'T PLAY IT, because it is not a game! I wish the stores had an "In Game Currency" filter, not just "In App Purchases".

spamtarget 5y ago

This is really great. Is there something similar to non-gaming software?

fire 5y ago
I believe https://www.darkpatterns.org/ https://www.darkpatterns.org/ is a general Dark Patterns site

kant_adorn_arts 5y ago

What a great website. I'd been thinking of how to find such info. We buy lots of kids games, and this is a great 'cheat sheet'. It is great that you spell out the dark patterns. Who reviews the games? Upfront, it seems like they have done an excellent job.

errcorrectcode 5y ago

Why I love retro DOS and Window games. Basically none of this nonsense.

dang 5y ago

One past discussion: Show HN: Dark Patterns in Game Design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20953553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20953553 - Sept 2019 (8 comments)

awelxtr 5y ago

With free games it would be easier to put a list of games without dark patterns.

mdrzn 5y ago

After a quick skimming of both dark and non-dark pattern games, seems that most of the dark pattern ones are free with in-app purchases, while the non-dark pattern games are priced at a couple dollars, sometimes with zero in app purchases. Different revenue models.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
A while back I tried to find some good rhythm games for mobile, and they seemed to fall into two categories: * Unpolished games with more limited and/or less interesting content that you could buy for a straight fee * Fun-looking, polished games with songs I wanted to try that were filled with energy systems and ways to get you to spend money forever and ever
- jamesgeck0 5y ago
  osu!stream is a pretty good free one on iOS, but unfortunately they're done updating it.

thenerdhead 5y ago

So this can help parents and kids with mobile games, but let’s talk about the elephant in the room of the games we ourselves are addicted to or our kids keep coming back to play. When I was a teen I was addicted to World of Warcraft. I played for a few years before quitting. My grades dropped, my social life was hurting, and all for just in game items? I remember how worried my parents were about my screen time and the lengths they went to try and limit it. Some of my best friends continue to play to this day and keep telling me that they are bored with it and will quit next expansion. They are now re-playing the same game over like they did with me a decade ago as it’s now a “classic” version. How do we help people get help they desire when these games create almost a combative, intervention needed type of situation? There’s https://www.restartlife.com/ https://www.restartlife.com/ and other similar types of websites out there to help, but I feel like the problem is the dark patterns already have a hold on one’s behavior to the point where only that person can be the agent of change or a major event happens in their life to spark the change.

Bancakes 5y ago
You can't think in interventions. A person has to realise their way of life objectively and feel they are making a mistake. They don't feel WoW is a waste of time. Same thing with weight loss.
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  It was used in reference to a friend who has told me countlessly that they want to quit but they don't know how. I also ran into this as a teen but "woke" up from it when going to college.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Reminds me of the studies with drug addiction and rats. IIRC some of the early studies about how certain drugs were so addictive were done with rats who basically couldn't do anything else, and when you give the rats other things to do in their life, suddenly the drugs aren't as interesting. I think the fundamental thing about playing repetitive games like WoW forever is that the skinner box is more interesting than real life, which is more an indictment of their real life than the game. Not sure how to fix that, though, and certainly there are people who can enjoy MMO's in moderation.

k__ 5y ago

I always see cool ads for games that have nothing to do with the games I end up installing. Would be nice to find the real games, if they even exist.

lucideer 5y ago

Great website. I'll be using this. Two small bits of UI feedback: 1. It's not extremely clear that the search field is usable 2. Feature request (probably for medium term, I get this is a very new project): The 4 boxes up top giving a breakdown of different dark patterns is cool, but it would be cooler to filter granularly. e.g. some might not care too much to avoid such things as grinding or "complete the collection", but would still like to avoid others.

DavideNL 5y ago

Heh. So if you click the Apple icon, you get games that are NOT playable on Apple devices :S *confusing*

jiggunjer 5y ago

I'm pretty confident gaming addiction is a thing, but not sure how strong (in terms of studies/evidence) the correlation is with these dark patterns. My hypothesis is that certain personality types are just more susceptible to gaming addiction, regardless of patterns.

elldoubleyew 5y ago
I’ve always wondered if I have a “gaming addiction” I play league of legends at least 4 hours per day, sometimes 20+ hours. I am obsessed with learning all the intricacies and improving in the ELO-based ranking system. I still maintain a full time job as an SWE, a romantic relationship, and personal hygiene/diet. Admittedly LoL comes first before work for me, and can cause tension in my relationship at times. I know many men that have a very similar relationship with golf, but are they golf addicts?
- meetups323 5y ago
  I don't think very many men play golf at least 4 hours every day. That's a full round of 18, every single day? And some days 5 full rounds? The exception would maybe be if they're working from the course (closing deals/making calls/etc.), but that's pretty different from your situation.
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  You have a "gaming addiction" as much as some people have a "network television" addiction. Some people just like to experience a medium for several hours a day. Playing four hours of LoL is just as meaningless as watching four hours of TV. One is more stigmatized than the other (I'll give you a hint, the one where ads can be delivered on a regular schedule is the more acceptable one). And I'm willing to bet that if there's something you need to do that night, you could sacrifice one or two days to get things done and not feel any ill effects (and if I may rib on it a bit, probably feel much better having stepped away from LoL).
  - mkl95 5y ago
    This. Being an addict to "x" often depends on what relationship the average citizen is expected to have with "x". In a deeply religious society, reading and analyzing religious texts for hours every day may be seen as an average activity, while in a non religious society you may be seen as a lunatic. In most if not all societies, people are expected to work full time, but workaholism treatment centers are not particularly popular.

frankohn 5y ago

Games with dark patterns are an overwhelming majority on Android. That's sad because they abuse fragile people and children. That didn't had to be that way if Google didn't promote its ad-based revenue model for apps and games. To my eyes they are responsible for the current situation.

brnt 5y ago
Every time I open the app store on my Android phone, I am amazed at the utter drivel it presents me with. I guess that's the attention economy at work.

sorenn111 5y ago

Relevant plug for Lichess mobile app (I am not affiliated). It's a free chess app that allows for rated play against opponents. Tens of thousands of concurrent games. No ads or payments (I don't remember if I paid, but I would be happy to support). No bells, no whistles, just chess. I have a pseudo addictive personality and mobile phone games P2W have gotten me to shell out more than I'd care to admit. I've stopped playing all such mobile games and my "nicotine gum" game was getting back to my roots (elementary school chess team): mobile chess from Lichess.

vesche 5y ago
Lichess is amazing and I use it every day. Completely free, no ads, and runs 100% on donations. They publish their costs, it takes ~420K a year to keep Lichess running and the primary developer of Lichess takes home about ~56K a year. https://lichess.org/costs https://lichess.org/costs Anyone reading who loves Lichess consider becoming a patron - https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron
Haydos585x2 5y ago
You wouldn't have paid for Lichess but you can donate to keep the site alive (and get some neat wings). You can also view their costs over at https://lichess.org/costs https://lichess.org/costs

frankohn 5y ago

China is taking draconian measures to protect people from game addiction. While I generally don't agree with their politics I feel they are doing the right things to protect the society. I feel the occidental states are not doing enough to protect people from game addiction and protect children from tablet addiction and bad contents. These thing are slowly eroding our society and making people more miserable when they are not able to help themselves against all these forms of addiction.

tifadg1 5y ago
Are you referring to limiting online play time or were there other steps as well?
- frankohn 5y ago
  I only know about limiting online games.
  - Kiro 5y ago
    China's video game regulator hasn't approved any new titles since July 2021. Sounds like an outright ban to me.
finiteseries 5y ago
Video games and tablets are not eroding our societies. Children’s usage of video games and tablets is their parents job, not the national government’s. I don’t know what country you’re in, but the thought of whoever is in control of mine “protecting” anyone from bad contents, let alone children, is enough to send chills down one’s spine. That is a blank check on info consumption and the sheer naivety required to entertain that idea for more than a second is bewildering.
- seneca 5y ago
  Well said. I do think there is a place for state institutions to fund research and public-good marketing campaigns on these issues. Maybe to go so far as campaigns explaining these behaviors are unhealthy and potentially dangerous in optional school programs. In short, state intervention in child rearing, short of major abuse, should be limited to optional education.

BudaDude 5y ago

Great website ! I was surprised to not see Magic Arena on there .

TulliusCicero 5y ago

Wow, this site has a very low threshold for considering something a 'dark pattern'. If you look at the psychological section, these are all considered dark patterns: * A leveling up system * Badges/achievements * Collecting things * Getting better tools/equipment as the game progresses That's like...most games, I think? Most single-player games at least probably have at least one of those. edit: some of the examples listed here are hilarious > D4DJ Groovy Mix > "difficulty 1 through 14 is easy to learn and master, while 15 is the hardest difficulty in the game. makes people think that they have 90% of the skill of the best player but in reality it is not the case" > Magic: The Gathering Arena > "There are mysterious matchmaking algorithms. It isn't clear how these work. At face, they appear to match players of similar skill or deck strength."

dmonitor 5y ago
improving in skill creates investment in the game, which is apparently bad according to one of the bullet points. I like the concept and think this is a topic that deserves more attention, but the definition is broad to the point of meaninglessness
brnt 5y ago
I actually totally agree. For way longer than I should have did I avoid RPGs because of those systems, because they seemed a silly reduction of "progress". Now that I play RPGs, I still find them pointless annoyances that get in my way of enjoying the world/story. I still don't like that Steam added achievements to my games. I wish I could disable the entire "feature".
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  "I personally don't like this thing" isn't the same thing as "dark pattern." There are people like you that explicitly avoid RPG's, sure, and there are people who explicitly seek them out because they enjoy that part of the mechanics. Having 'levels' in games has been around for a long time, you can probably trace them back to the beginning days of D&D. Were the original D&D authors trying to get people addicted? Probably not, it was just something they thought players would like. And indeed, many players do.

saint_angels 5y ago

I think the website would be more useful, if you can select what patterns you personally consider "dark" and filter by those. For example, I don't consider "Variable Rewards" as a dark pattern and don't want it to affect game scores in a list.

wantsanagent 5y ago
Ironically variable reward schedules are the most powerful reward schedules for maintaining behavior in the absence of further rewards. I know you're not a rat/pidgeon but it's just funny you picked the one that classical behavioral psychology would say is close to the most influential.
- p1necone 5y ago
  It's also crucial to some genres working at all though. Can you imagine a roguelike /without/ randomized loot?

yelling_cat 5y ago

Plenty of great word or number games only cost a couple of bucks to buy or remove ads on forever and have no other IAPs. Half of my family is obsessed with Wordsmyth at the moment. Most mobile action games are stuffed with dark patterns these days, but there are plenty of great ports with only one-time charges. Rockstar's ported Max Payne and most of their great PS2-era games: GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, Bully, Max Payne, etc.

banana_giraffe 5y ago

The two games I looked up have a handful of votes, but are wrong, or based on a optimistic view of a portion of the game. Which is to say, it feels like this site itself is being gamified to a degree. Fans of games will no doubt "vouch" for their favorite game, ignoring dark patterns unless they're severe.

aeternum 5y ago
It's a great idea but terrible UI. The sort needs to be different, a game with a single 5.0 rating should not appear above a game with 10,000 reviews but a 4.99 rating.

GuB-42 5y ago

Interesting how some "dark patterns", especially of the psychological kind, are actually important elements of good game design. For example the "illusion of control" (The game cheats or hides information to make you think you're better than you actually are) is everywhere, and it makes better games. One classic example is "coyote time" in platform games. Or for a more specific example, in Portal, at one time, you have to quickly fire a portal to avoid being crushed, it is a tense situation, and an important part of the story. So, to avoid a stupid death at the worst time, if you fire the wrong portal, it silently switches the other portal to correct your mistake. Aesthetic Manipulations (Trick questions or toying with emotions or our subconscious desires) is the entire point of many games. We want games to play with our emotions. Take a horror game for instance, you are sitting on a couch, at home, in the least scary environment you can imagine, the game has to pull all the trick on you if you want the scares you paid for. And no one is going to tell you that getting attached to characters is a bad thing and they would rather see them as the bunch of pixels they are. Frequency biases are all over the place too, usually in favor of the player. So much that when the game uses true randomness, it feels unfair. Good games are designed for player enjoyment, not to punish them with randomness. It also considers competition a dark pattern, are sports a dark pattern too?

bduerst 5y ago
Yeah, I looked up Dead Cells, and it lost points for being "too grindy", which is a big part of playing Rogue-likes.
- glenstein 5y ago
  It's also a big indictment of them. I remember with Rogue Legacy, a game I was into for a time, a central debate about whether it was good or bad related to whether it was "too grindy", with some insisting it was (which was bad) and others insisting it wasn't (which is good!). And yet, whatever you call it, the grind, the accumulation of upgrades is central to the experience of the game.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  Dead Cells is one of my favorite games but I would agree it's too grindy. In my opinion the game can be even more addicting by speeding up the rate at which the player unlocks new weapons. I started enjoying the game a lot more after installing a mod that makes things drop more cells. Edit: I forgot to mention that I don't think it's a dark pattern, just a relatively poorly balanced mechanic.

joeframbach 5y ago

Hilarious filter pattern in use in the top games list: https://www.darkpattern.games/games.php?alignment=dark https://www.darkpattern.games/games.php?alignment=dark. At the top is a "Filter by Platform" list which filters out, not in. I clicked the Android logo expecting, you know, to filter for Android. The resulting querystring when you click Android is "?alignment=dark&android=0". It literally filters out not in.

duxup 5y ago

I like this idea BUT... I feel like this is too much of boolean checkbox type situation. I play a game that is on the F2P model. You can play free and it's great. If you pay you get some advantages as far as progression goes and some vehicles that are better than free vehicles (sometimes...) but IMO ultimately it's the skill of the player that determines your experience. The game has the usual loot boxes and stuff I don't care for. I just don't do that stuff. I really like the game ... it plays well and I've no problem throwing a couple bucks their way from time to time. I've gotten more out of it than many $60 AAA titles. If I went by check boxes the game has everything I hate, and yet I really enjoy playing and don't have to do any of the 'dark pattern' stuff. It's just to binary to say "has X is Y bad".

kovek 5y ago

Reminds me of the games Buddha would not play

SethTro 5y ago

I hate absolute ratings (e.g. 5/5 with 1 vote being ranked higher than 4.99/5 with 100 votes). All the top games seem to have 1 report giving everything positive ratings so that other fabulous games with more ratings but say a 4.97 rating are lost. https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...

null0pointer 5y ago
3blue1brown has a great series of videos about how you should reason about these types of ratings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8idr1WZ1A7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8idr1WZ1A7Q
selcuka 5y ago
I believe computing (or even knowing about) the Wilson score is beyond the capabilities of your typical full-stack developer, but one could at least have the common sense to hide ratings until an item has a sufficient number of them (say, 10).

mmh0000 5y ago

I avoid all mobile games because they're, for the most part, just spyware. I read though this list hoping to find something, clicking a few random games, everything looks pretty similar: Data Linked to You The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Purchases Location Identifiers Diagnostics Other Data I'm sorry, but no. You do not need my location, identifies or other data. gtfo

cardosof 5y ago

Recently I've bought a Nintendo Switch because I've come to the realization that mobile games (I play on a high end tablet) are inferior. Why? Because most of then rely on dark patterns to get you watching ads or paying lots of money to roll chances like a casino. Console games are more likely to provide you a quality, limited time, instead of the opposite -infinite low quality time.

atum47 5y ago

This seems like a nice list to be on; how do I submit my game? It has no ads, no dark patterns... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.victorribeiro.qubes https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.victorribe... Android only for now, but an apple version could be arranged

user123456780 5y ago

You can see a correlation between healthy and unhealthy games in their icons. Ungealthy games are mostly high quality 'renders' for lack of a better term. The healthy games have a much less attention grabbing 'lower quality' icon.

JetAlone 5y ago
That observation suggests that if we want to improve player health, an effective place to start is to set up pro-bono or subsidized initiatives to create very high-quality, eye catching icons for the games recognized as healthy in order to help them compete. That's by no means an exhaustive solution - part of this is survivorship bias too. The devs are incentivized to invest in the dark pattern games that generate plenty of revenue for comparatively little effort and those investments include more frequent feature additions, bug fix and content updates. Services to buttress these offerings for healthy games would also be important.

hnthrowaway0315 5y ago

Some recommendations: If you enjoy Wizardry, there is a Japanese developer who developed a few WZ clones. Just search "Wizardry" in Google play and you should find it. It's called the "Wandroid" series. AFAIS the sales were decent (1K+ for the first game) for such a game. There are also mobile ports for classic games such as "Dungeon Master". But overall, I don't see Mobile as a healthy gaming platform.

Kiro 5y ago

I love grinding and found a lot of good games in the "Dark Games" section so thanks!

causality0 5y ago

You want healthy mobile games? Emulate console games from before consoles were online. There you go, thousands of games created purely to be games.

DaveSapien 5y ago

This is so much up my street its practically in my house! A few days ago, I just released a mobile game focused very much on the wellbeing of the player. It's called Kanso, And I'll be submitting it here for sure. Thank you very much for posting!!!!

autoexec 5y ago

Cool site! I wish there was a way to show games which are both free and healthy. I suspect it would be a small list, but still worth having.

user3939382 5y ago

I always wish the iOS app store had a search filter for “Free + No in—app purchases” plus all categories or specific e.g. Games.

rexf 5y ago
Free + No IAP sounds great for users, but it's completely unsustainable for developers. So don't expect any major updates over time.
- user3939382 5y ago
  I’m a developer, I get it. However those apps do exist so their developers have already made that decision.

vesche 5y ago

I have tried a various many different types of mobile games on Android and have only ever held onto two mobile game apps: Lichess and Wordiest. Every other gaming app I have briefly tried (before uninstalling) has had one of these dark patterns: pay to win, invasive fullscreen video ads, daily play incentives, and/or incessant grind to complete never-ending objectives. It's unfortunate that there aren't more quality gaming apps on mobile.

parentheses 5y ago
lichess is so well made
svachalek 5y ago
The healthy games column on this site actually has some good recommendations. Lara Croft Go is so good, it's sad they don't make them like this anymore. Legends of Runeterra is really, really free to play. It has daily rewards, competition, and some other stuff this site calls dark patterns, but I've got close to everything (and there's a lot) in the game for free and never really felt pressured to pay money or even to play, which satisfies my personal sense of fairness. No ads either, they make their money selling cosmetic stuff. My go-to these days is board game apps. For the most part, they're very free of all this crap. Some great adaptations: Through the Ages, Scythe, Root, Wingspan, Concordia, Galaxy Trucker, Railroad Ink, Spirit Island. Spirit Island is at a higher price point than the rest, and tries to get you on a monthly subscription. But it's a fantastic board game.

guelo 5y ago

One of the worst parts of the walled garden app stores is how they control search to maximize their profits. Even when they are forced by regulation, for example to label apps with ads, you still can't search by that field.

activitypea 5y ago

Surprised Slay The Spire is on the nice list. It doesn't extract money but it's definitely designed to be addictive

rafael859 5y ago

This feels like a sort of granular MPAA/content rating but instead of movies it is for mobile games. Of course that is very valuable, and knowing that a particular game has certain attributes could help someone avoid it before they come across them while playing it (similar to how people approach content ratings and trigger warnings), but I don't think it makes sense to rank games based on that. I don't care to know what is the game with the fewest dark patterns, I care to know what is the best game that doesn't have that many (or particular ones that affect me). It looks like the data is there, so this is likely just an improvement on the presentation side. They seem to have coverage of around 50000* games which is very impressive, so perhaps at this point they should spend some time to make that data actually accessible. I would personally recommend https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ for similar purposes, even though it has a much smaller collection as it seems better curated and way easier on the eyes. *Edit: Scratch that, it looks like games after page 9 don't have ratings so it's more like 300 games total with a couple of reviews each.

yes_really 5y ago

> There are mysterious matchmaking algorithms. It isn't clear how these work. At face, they appear to match players of similar skill or deck strength. One of the dark patterns they found in Magic the Gathering Arena is "Illusion of Control" because they match players of similar skill or deck strength. I actually think it is a good thing they match games this way, and it seems like the website is just looking for things to complain about games.

outloudvi 5y ago

Well... it's a game, not a service with fixed features, so everything will make little sense if it brings no fun.

jaanak 5y ago

This is exactly the service what I been planning for the last two years.

p1necone 5y ago

This list seems pretty ridiculous to me. What they call dark patterns mostly just seem to be various things that make games more fun. My personal definition of dark patterns in games is basically anything that sacrifices fun, consistency of progression, consistency/believability of setting or suspension of disbelief in order to get people to pay more money. If you aren't sacrificing your vision to extract more money from consumers though, go nuts.

needle0 5y ago

What I find problematic with websites like this is that the whole thing is based on an implicit assumption that there is a universal "good" and "evil" (probably from an anglophone westerner point of view), with no regard for personal, regional, and cultural differences. Things are never that simple, and that assumption reeks of hubris.

srcreigh 5y ago
Relativism is a western concept

junon 5y ago

I've thought about making something like this for a while, happy to see it!

chalst 5y ago

I guessed as a grind-free roguelike, Hyperrogue must score highly [1]. Alas it is unreviewed [2]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432974 [2]: https://www.darkpattern.games/game/18554/0/hyperrogue.html https://www.darkpattern.games/game/18554/0/hyperrogue.html

chalst 5y ago
More obscure is King of Dragon Pass, which I've reviewed, giving it three dark patterns. https://www.darkpattern.games/game/3735/1/king-of-dragon-pass.html https://www.darkpattern.games/game/3735/1/king-of-dragon-pas...

cdubzzz 5y ago

This reminded about the “Go” games from Square Enix[0]. They are so fun. I wish they’d make more of them. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app-bundle/the-go-trilogy/id1181929904 https://apps.apple.com/us/app-bundle/the-go-trilogy/id118192...

wingerlang 5y ago

>> Competition - The game makes you compete against other players. PvP games are flagged as dark patterns by this..

Walton69 5y ago

[dead]

illuminati1911 5y ago

If this site is legit then this awesome. Mobile apps and games today are pretty much dead as far as iOS App store is concerned. 99% of new and featured apps and games are "free" and try to force you to either buy tokens or pay monthly fee or something as insane. Even the most trivial sports tracker (how many reps/minutes etc.) apps try to make you pay ridiculous monthly fee or sell "lifetime" license for several hundreds of USDs.

stavros 5y ago

This site has an interesting categorization system. I made https://nobsgames.stavros.io https://nobsgames.stavros.io a while back, and chose something slightly different (mostly based on the existence of in-game currency or pay-to-win). I don't know which system is better, but mine has worked very well for me, I've discovered some great games.

_pmf_ 5y ago

Obligatory plug for Simon Tatham's (the author of Putty) puzzle application.

jeswin 5y ago

Google bears huge responsibility for the decline in ethics here. They enabled this very explicitly via features on the App Store for Android. - There's no way to filter ad-free apps, and the app store is loaded with ad-ridden apps. I am totally willing to pay, but it's not easy any more to find ad-free, paid apps. - One time payment is mostly dead. I'd have loved it, even if it was a heftier initial amount. Instead we have in-app purchases and subscriptions. The problem with subscriptions is that now you've to get the user hooked on like with a drug, or they'll stop paying. Hence a lot of engineering is devoted to manipulating the user. As more apps went down this path, expectations were lowered, and developers slowly embraced shady practices for more "engagement".

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Just buy any Michael Brough game, for example Cinco Paus, and be done with it

arubania2 5y ago

I’m a bit disappointed that the website only focuses on the health aspect, and nothing more gaming related and in-depth, such as: - cheap enemy shots that are almost unavoidable based on reflexes alone, you need to know about them in advance and position yourself properly (Metal Slug games do this sometimes) - overly long boss fights where they have predictable and repeatable attacks, but huge HP pools and intend to wear the player down - intentionally sluggish controls, beyond what could be explained by poor programming; perhaps intended as a way of artificially increasing the difficulty Shouldn’t these be considered “dark pattens” too?