Text-based games: ASCII, etc. sorted by release date

ARJ is a file compression utility and file format created by Robert K. Jung. The name "ARJ" stands for "Archived by Robert Jung." It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s a...

Step right up to At the Carnival (1990), a puzzle game that mixes traditional brain-teasers with the kind of carnival theming that makes you question whether the developers had eve...

It’s Boggle (1990, DOS), the digital version of everyone’s favorite game where you try to spell long words while your friend keeps shouting “DOG” over and o...

Remember those endless, hypnotic tile-matching games before Candy Crush hijacked your aunt’s phone? Cascade was already there, dropping blocks and breaking combos like it inv...

Gumboots Australia is a delightful educational romp that turns geography into a cheerful scavenger hunt. You travel across Australia answering questions, solving simple challenges,...

In Lost Adventures of Kroz, ASCII characters do all the heavy lifting. No sprites, no polygons — just your imagination and a fearless “@” symbol running for its l...

The previous file hosted here was put online by mistake (it was the deluxe version, not the basic one). Copyright holders kindly allowed Abandonware DOS to link directly to their w...

Kroz returns, and with it, your CRT monitor’s worst nightmare: ASCII graphics! Return to Kroz takes you back to a time when @ meant “you,” and everything else was...

So, you think you know Star Trek? The Next Generation – Trivia (1990, DOS) is here to prove you wrong. This is a straight-up quiz game, packed with hundreds of questions rang...

A Night with Troi (1991) sounds like a fan fiction gone too far - and, well, that’s pretty much what it is. It’s a DOS-based “adventure” in the loosest sens...

In Druglord, you’re back on the mean streets, older, wiser, and with slightly better ASCII. Think of it as Drug Wars’s bigger, nastier cousin. You start broke, deal wit...

Magnetic Scrolls was one of the finest developer companies dedicated to Interactive Fiction. The Magnetic Scrolls Collection is a trilogy of Magnenic Scrolls adventures remade usin...

QBasic, or QuickBASIC, was an interpreted version of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft. It was designed to be easy to learn and use, making it accessible to beg...

Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance is an adventure game released in 1991, developed by Steve Meretzky and published by Legend Entertainment. It’s the second installme...

ZZT (1991, DOS) looks like it was drawn by an enthusiastic ASCII artist with too much time and not enough colors. And yet, it’s brilliant. Part action game, part puzzle adven...

If you’ve ever thought The Lord of the Rings needed more ASCII and fewer hobbit feelings, Angband is your jam. Since 1992, this dungeon-crawling roguelike has been throwing p...