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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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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Championship Manager 93

DOS19934/5 Domark Software

Dungeon Master's Assistant Vol 1

DOS1988protected4/5 SSI Strategic Simulations Inc.

Felony!

DOS19844/5 BrainBank

Football Fanatic

DOS1998freeware4/5

Forbidden Castle

DOS19854/5 Angelsoft

Grand Prix

DOS19894/5 Wizard Games

Gumboots Australia

DOS19904/5 Reckon Software

Incursion

WindowsLinuxMac2007freeware4/5

Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

DOS19964/5

Seastalker

DOS19844/5 Infocom

Sherlock Holmes: The Vatican Cameos

DOS19864/5 Magicom Multimedia

Softporn Adventure

DOS1981freewareNSFW4/5 Sierra On-Line

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

DOSMac19864/5 TRANS Fiction Systems

The Golden Fleece

DOS19894/5

The Witness

DOS19834/5 Infocom

Turbo Pascal 7

DOSWindows 3.xMac19924/5 Borland Software Corporation

Turbo Pascal 7 (TP7) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed by Borland as an evolution of their earlier Turbo Pascal versions. Turbo Pascal 7 was released around 1992.Turbo Pascal 7 gained popularity in educational settings and among hobbyist progra...

ZAngband

WindowsMacDOSLinux1999freeware4/5

Zangband is a variant of the popular roguelike game Angband. Zangband, short for Zelazny Angband, was developed by Chris Weisiger and first released in 1994. The game features a fantasy world with diverse races, classes, and monsters. Players explore dungeons, caves, and other environments in a quest to reach the bottom level of the dungeon, d...

Angband

Windows XP/98/95DOSLinux1992freeware4/5

Dungeon Crawl

Windows XP/98/95DOSLinux1997freeware4/5

Dungeon Crawl (also known as Linley's Dungeon Crawl from the name of the original programmer: Linley Henzell) is a classic roguelike: an RPG with permadeath, procedural generation and high replayability. Dungeon Crawl was released on 1997 but it's not maintained anymore. The spiritual successr of Crawl is DCCS (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup).

Uplink: Hacker Elite

Windows XP/98/95LinuxMac2001protected4/5 Introversion Software Limited

Uplink is a computer hacking simulation game released in 2001 by Introversion Software. The game allows players to take on the role of a hacker for hire and engage in various hacking activities.In Uplink, players perform tasks such as hacking into systems, stealing data, and covering their tracks. The game features a realistic representation of hac...