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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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.
A few genres traditionally linked to the beautiful world of ascii characters still survives: roguelikes (nethack, angband, etc.) and interactive fiction, for example.
Sort by:
A-Maze
DOS19894.2/5 New Era Software
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 ...
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...
A Mind Forever Voyaging
DOSMac OS19854.1/5 Infocom
Championship Manager 93
DOS19934.1/5 Domark Software
Indenture
DOS1995remake4.1/5
Rambo First Blood Part 2
DOS19854.1/5 Angelsoft
James Bond 007: Goldfinger
DOS19864.1/5 Angelsoft
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
Mo'Slo
DOS1990protected4.1/5 Dr.David's Super Crispy Software
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 website where you can buy the deluxe version of Mo'Slo.
Armchair Quarterback
DOS19854.1/5
Baseball Mogul 2006
Windows20054.1/5
Slash'Em
Windows XP/98/95Linux1997freeware4.1/5
Time and Magik: The Trilogy
DOS19884.1/5 Level 9 Computing
Turbo Assembler (TASM)
DOSWindows 3.xWindows XP/98/9519894.1/5 Borland Software Corporation
Turbo Assembler, often referred to as TASM, is an x86 assembler for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. As a key component of Borland's suite of development tools, TASM was packaged alongside Turbo Debugger (TD), forming the Turbo Assembler/Turbo Debugger (TASM/TD) bundle. Turbo Assembler was favored for its speed and compatibility with the popular ...
Turbo Prolog 2.0
DOS1986protected4.1/5 Borland Software Corporation
The Lurking Horror
DOS19874.1/5 Infocom
Crime and Punishment
DOS19844.1/5 Mindscape
Inside Trader
DOS19874.1/5 Cosmi Corporation
Galaxy
DOS19814.1/5 Microcomputer Games Inc.
Trinity
DOS19864.1/5 Infocom
Magnetic Scrolls Collection
DOS19914.1/5 Magnetic Scrolls
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 using the Wonderland engine: Fish!, Corruption, The Guild of Thieves. The new window-based interface made text-adventuring easy even for gamers not used to a text-only interf...
Borland DBase 5
DOS19944.1/5 Borland Software Corporation
DOSBox
Windows XP/98/95LinuxMac OS2002freeware4.1/5
DOSBox is an open-source emulator that allows you to run software and games designed for the MS-DOS operating system on modern computers. As you probably already know, MS-DOS was a popular operating system used in the 1980s and early 1990s. DOSBox emulates the necessary hardware components and provides a DOS-like environment, allowing users to...
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...
Championship Manager Italia
DOS19934.1/5 Sports Interactive Limited
DOS Navigator v 1.5
DOS1991freeware4.1/5
Breakers
DOS19864.1/5 Synapse Software