This reminds me less of parser-based text games and more of the 1990s hyperfiction like Afternoon, a story [1], Victory Garden [2] or 253 [3] and net.art like My boyfriend came back from the war [4]. Give those a look if you liked this. The hypertext novel 253, which looks in the life of every passenger on a London Underground train, is probably the best starting point.
Edit: Oh, and also Fallen London [5] and other StoryNexus games. In fact, in terms of mechanics A Dark Room is probably the closest to Fallen London of all the games of which I can think.
By the way, and if you're at all interested in the history of hypertext fiction do watch this video: http://vimeo.com/15561443. The speaker in the video talks about a fascinating parallel culture of hypertext writers and readers who paradoxically seem to resist the idea of putting their creations on the Web. Instead, some of the authors choose to disseminate their works on physical media: floppy disks, CD-ROMs and now flash drives.
By the way, and if you're at all interested in the history of hypertext fiction do watch this video: http://vimeo.com/15561443. The speaker in the video talks about a fascinating parallel culture of hypertext writers and readers who paradoxically seem to resist the idea of putting their creations on the Web. Instead, some of the authors choose to disseminate their works on physical media: floppy disks, CD-ROMs and now flash drives.