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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

DOS19864.2/5 Level 9 Computing

LHA

DOS19884.2/5

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

DOS19824.2/5 Infocom

Zork is one of the most popular text-adventures and one of the first interactive fiction games ever created. The first Zork was developed in the seventies and ported on various platform by Infocom in the early 80s. Infocom was one of the most prolific developers of text-adventures for home computers and created memorable interactive fiction ga...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

DOSMac OS1984freeware4.2/5 Infocom

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a humorous free text adventure game based on the novel of the same name written by Douglas Adams (if you never read it, shame on you!). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was designed by Douglas Adams himself and interactive fiction god Steve Eric Meretzky, it was released by Infocom in 1984 for DOS and for...

A-Maze

DOS19894.2/5 New Era Software

Leather Goddesses of Phobos

DOS19864.2/5 Infocom

Planetfall

DOS19834.1/5 Infocom

A Mind Forever Voyaging

DOSMac OS19854.1/5 Infocom

Borland Turbo C v1

DOS19874.1/5 Borland Software Corporation

Indenture

DOS1995remake4.1/5

Rambo First Blood Part 2

DOS19854.1/5 Angelsoft

GW-BASIC 3

DOS19884.1/5 Microsoft

GW-BASIC (short for Gee Whiz BASIC) is a dialect of the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. It's one of the early implementations of BASIC and was included as the default programming environment in early versions of the MS-DOS operating system.GW-BASIC was initially released with MS-DOS 2.0 in 1983. Subsequent versions of MS...

James Bond 007: Goldfinger

DOS19864.1/5 Angelsoft

Borland Turbo Basic 1.0

DOS19874.1/5 Borland Software Corporation

Borland Turbo Basic was a programming language developed by Borland, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Turbo Basic was part of the Turbo series of programming languages and development tools that Borland created during that time.Turbo Basic was designed as a fast and efficient version of the BASIC programming language. B...

Myth

DOS19894.1/5 Magnetic Scrolls

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man

DOS19864.1/5 Adventure International

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is an abandoned text-based adventure game designed by Scott Adams, developed and released by Adventure International in 1986 for DOS but was also published for Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Dragon 32, ZX Spectrum, MSX. Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is part of the Questprobe game series, the ...

Lancelot

DOS19884.1/5 Level 9 Computing

Sorcerer

DOS19844.1/5 Infocom

Armchair Quarterback

DOS19854.1/5

Baseball Mogul 2006

Windows20054.1/5

Championship Manager

DOS19924.1/5 Domark Software

Championship Manager is the first chapter in one of the most successful football manager games series. The first Championship Manager was a text-based British football/soccer simulation and included teams from four English divisions, European cups and domestic cups as well. Championship Manager was designed by Paul and Oliver Collyer and ...