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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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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Alice in Wonderland

DOS19893.3/5

Warp Rogue

WindowsLinux2004freeware3.9/5

Sleuth: A Murder Mystery

DOS1983freeware4.2/5 Norland Software

Lynx

DOS1992freeware3/5

Lost Adventures of Kroz

DOS1990freeware3.3/5 Apogee Software

Hollywood Hijinx

DOS19863.3/5 Infocom

LHA

DOS19884.2/5

Boggle

DOS19903.5/5 HVB Software

Rules of Engagement

DOS19913.6/5 Omnitrend Software

Midway Campaign

DOS19834/5 Microcomputer Games Inc.

The Lurking Horror

DOS19874.1/5 Infocom

Hockey League Simulator

DOS19903.3/5 Bethesda Softworks

James Bond 007: Goldfinger

DOS19864.1/5 Angelsoft

Doszip Commander

DOS2007freeware3.9/5

WitchavenRL

WindowsLinux20133.8/5

Arachne WWW

DOS1996freeware4.2/5

Arachne is a graphical web browser for DOS. Arachne was developed by Michal Polák and released in the early 1990s as a text-mode web browser with limited graphical capabilities. Arachne allowed DOS users to browse the World Wide Web in a graphical, though quite basic, manner. It supported features such as displaying images, handling lin...

Dungeon Master's Assistant Vol 2

DOS1989protected3.8/5 SSI Strategic Simulations Inc.

Dungeons of Kroz

DOS1989freeware3.6/5 Apogee Software

Microsoft Diagnostics 3.01

DOS19943.7/5 Microsoft

At the Carnival

DOS1990freeware3/5

ZAngband

WindowsMac OSDOSLinux1999freeware4.3/5

Zangband is a variant of the popular roguelike game Angband. Zangband, short for Zelazny Angband, was developed by Chris Weisiger and first released in 1994. The game features a fantasy world with diverse races, classes, and monsters. Players explore dungeons, caves, and other environments in a quest to reach the bottom level of the dungeon, d...

Taipan for Windows

Windows XP/98/952002freeware3.5/5

Earthly delights

DOS19843.6/5 Datamost

Dungeons of Kroz 2

DOS19893.6/5 Apogee Software

Hacker 2: The Doomsday Papers

DOS19863.7/5 Activision

Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers is a video computer game developed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision. It was released in 1986 and is a sequel to the original Hacker game. The game was available for various home computer systems of the time, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS.In Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers, players take...