The best text-based games

Evets is a puzzle game that proves simplicity can be deceptive. With minimal graphics and a straightforward premise, it invites you in gently before revealing its true complexity. ...

Guardians of Infinity: to Save Kennedy is the sort of time-travel adventure that casually suggests you might want to prevent one of the most infamous assassinations in history befo...

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...

Pro Manager is a 1985 sports management simulation that allows players to take control of a professional team and make the decisions usually handled behind the scenes. Instead of p...

In Psycho (1988), you’re tossed into a pixelated nightmare loosely inspired by Hitchcock’s classic, though Norman Bates might not recognize the place. You explore creep...

Reach for the Stars is a 4X strategy game from before the term “4X” even existed. It’s pure, stripped-down galactic conquest: research tech, colonize worlds, and ...

SRAM is a 1987 adventure game with a distinctly science-fiction flavor, placing the player in an unusual world where exploration, problem solving, and interaction are more importan...

Supernova is a classic science-fiction adventure that puts the player in the uncomfortable position of having to save the galaxy while also figuring out what the game actually expe...

Ah yes, Air Trax from 1983 - a game where “flight” is more of a philosophical concept. It’s clunky, it's slow, and it looks like it was coded in someone’s g...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Farenheit 451 is one of those early adventure games that feels like it’s constantly judging your typing skills. Loosely inspired by Bradbury’s...

Ever wanted to fight fire with... even more fire? Brimstone tosses you into a magical mess of spells, dungeons, and monsters who woke up on the wrong side of the crypt. It’s ...

Enchanter is interactive fiction with teeth. As a text adventure, it relies entirely on imagination, yet it manages to feel richer than many graphical games of its era. You play as...

Hockey League Simulator takes the thrilling, bone-crunching sport of hockey and boldly asks: what if you never actually played it? Instead, you manage teams, tweak stats, and stare...

In Infidel, you play a not-so-noble adventurer whose moral compass is spinning like a broken ceiling fan. As a treasure-hungry explorer poking around an ancient Egyptian tomb, you ...

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...

If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1...

Ever dreamed of a medieval Wall Street where knights swap swords instead of stocks? Knight Exchange turns that fever dream into pixels. Released in 1988 for DOS, this quirky strate...

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...

In Cutthroats, you’re a diver hired for a treasure-hunting expedition that’s about to go very wrong. This text adventure from Infocom mixes underwater exploration with ...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

Building upon the original formula, Kingdom of Kroz 2 introduces fresh levels, new challenges, and even more opportunities to question every decision you make. Exploration remains ...

The Astronomy Quiz is a straightforward educational title aimed at players who enjoy looking toward the stars and then discovering how little they actually know about them. Release...