The most popular text-based games

In the past, lots of games used ASCII characters (text) to represent the game world. These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.
A few genres traditionally linked to the beautiful world of ascii characters still survives: roguelikes (nethack, angband, etc.) and interactive fiction, for example.

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Lawn Mower

DOS19873.8/5

Adventure in Serenia

DOS19823.6/5 Sierra On-Line

Dream Zone

DOS19884.2/5 Naughty Dog

Leather Goddesses of Phobos

DOS19864.2/5 Infocom

Zork III: The Dungeon Master

DOS19844/5 Infocom

PKzip

DOS1989protected4/5 PKware

Super ZZT

DOS19923.3/5 Epic MegaGames

Wall Street Raider

DOS19864.4/5

B-1 Nuclear Bomber

DOS19813.6/5 Avalon Hill

Suspended

DOS19833.9/5 Infocom

Cutthroats

DOS19843.4/5 Infocom

A-Maze

DOS19894.2/5 New Era Software

Enchanter

DOS19833.3/5 Infocom

One-Nil Soccer Manager

DOS19923.9/5 New Era Software

One-Nil Soccer Manager is a text-based soccer management simulation game that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed for various home computer systems, including DOS, Commodore 64 and Amiga. In One-Nil Soccer Manager, players take on the role of a soccer team manager, making strategic decisions to guide their team to s...

Rambo First Blood Part 2

DOS19854.1/5 Angelsoft

Einstein Writer 7

DOS19853.5/5

Amnesia

DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation

Ascii Sector

WindowsLinuxDOS2007freeware3.9/5

FreeDOS Shell

DOS2002freeware3.6/5

Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz

DOS19894/5 Infocom

ZZT

DOS1991freeware4.2/5 Epic MegaGames

Borland Eureka: the Solver

DOS19873.9/5 Borland Software Corporation

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex problems, generate tables and plots, and perform what-if analysis. The user writes an equation, sets options, and instructs the software to solve the problem. The pro...

Math Cad 2.5

DOS19894.1/5

Adventure Game Studio (AGS)

WindowsLinuxMac OS1997freeware3.9/5

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is a software development tool that enables users to create point-and-click adventure games. It was originally created by Chris Jones and has been used by game developers to produce a variety of 2D adventure games. AGS provides a scripting language, a visual editor, and various other tools to simplify the game developmen...