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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

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.

Turbo Prolog 2.0

DOS1986protected4.1/5 Borland Software Corporation

Breakers

DOS19864.1/5 Synapse Software

Cascade

DOS19904.1/5 PC Solutions

IBM Assistant 2.0

DOS19864.1/5 IBM

DOSBox

Windows XP/98/95LinuxMac2002freeware4.1/5

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...

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...