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 These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics of modern games.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

Sleuth: A Murder Mystery

DOS1983freeware4.2/5 Norland Software

A Mind Forever Voyaging

DOSMac OS19854.1/5 Infocom

Pac-girl

DOS19823.7/5 Magicom Multimedia

Championship Manager 93

DOS19934.1/5 Domark Software

B-1 Nuclear Bomber

DOS19813.6/5 Avalon Hill

Classic Hangman

DOS19833.6/5 Norland Software

Football Fanatic

DOS1998freeware4/5

Xtrek

DOS1991freewareNSFW4/5

Amulet of Yendor

DOS19853.6/5 Keypunch Software

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

DOSMac OS19864/5 TRANS Fiction Systems

TomeNET

Windows XP/98/95Linux2003freeware4.4/5

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...

Hacker 2: The Doomsday Papers

DOS19863.7/5 Activision

Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers is a video computer game developed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision. It was released in 1986 and is a sequel to the original Hacker game. The game was available for various home computer systems of the time, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS.In Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers, players take...

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.