The most popular 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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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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Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur

DOS19894/5 Infocom

Armchair Quarterback

DOS19854.1/5

Adventure Game Studio (AGS)

WindowsLinuxMac OS1997freeware3.9/5

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is a software development tool that enables users to create point-and-click adventure games. It was originally created by Chris Jones and has been used by game developers to produce a variety of 2D adventure games. AGS provides a scripting language, a visual editor, and various other tools to simplify the game developmen...

Trinity

DOS19864.1/5 Infocom

IBM Assistant 2.0

DOS19864.1/5 IBM

Amulet of Yendor

DOS19853.6/5 Keypunch Software

Sorcerer

DOS19844.1/5 Infocom

1893: A World's Fair Mystery

Windows XP/98/95Mac OS20033.6/5

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, the game combines historical fiction with mystery-solving gameplay.In 1893: A World's Fair Mystery, players take on the role of a detective investigating ...

TomeNET

Windows XP/98/95Linux2003freeware4.3/5

Classic Hangman

DOS19833.6/5 Norland Software

The mist

DOS19854/5 Angelsoft

Myth

DOS19894.1/5 Magnetic Scrolls

NewsMaster

DOS19863.6/5

James Bond 007: A View to a Kill

DOS19853.9/5 Angelsoft

Wishbringer

DOS19853.7/5 Infocom

Demon's Tomb: The Awakening

DOS19893.3/5 Silhouette Software

Monopoly (Adam Stevens)

DOS19983.9/5

Kingdom of Kroz

DOS1988freeware3.7/5 Apogee Software

Moonmist

DOS19863.8/5 Infocom

Star Trek: First Contact

DOS19883.6/5 Simon & Schuster Interactive

Bank Streek Writer Plus

DOS19863/5

Borland Reflex 2.0

DOS19863.7/5 Borland Software Corporation

Borland Reflex was a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Borland International, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Reflex was released in the mid-1980s as a graphical database software primarily targeted at business and professional users.