Text-based game

A game presented in text alone, with no images. You read what happens and respond by typing commands or picking options, so the world and the challenge live mostly in your imagination.

Also known as: text game, text-based, parser-based

This is a basic entry: it has the definition and the classification. Full entries add history, games and a demo.

History

1964
Origin
Text games go back to the teleprinters of 1960s mainframes; one of the first is The Sumerian Game (1964–1966).
The Sumerian Game (Wikipedia)
1976
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure launches the text adventures played by typing commands.
Colossal Cave Adventure (Wikipedia)
1978
MUD1 takes the text game into a world shared by several players, a root of online role-playing games.
MUD1 (Wikipedia)

Reference games

1976

Colossal Cave Adventure

Will Crowther y Don Woods. PDP-10

You explore a cave system in search of treasure by typing one- or two-word commands such as "go north" or "get lamp". It is the first well-known text adventure and gave the adventure genre its name.

1977

Zork

Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels y Dave Lebling (luego Infocom). PDP-10, microordenadores

You explore an underground empire looking for treasure by typing full sentences such as "open mailbox". Its parser understood far richer commands than Colossal Cave's, and in 1980 it was split into Zork I, II and III.

2013

A Dark Room

Doublespeak Games (Michael Townsend). navegador, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch

You wake up in a cold, dark room and can only stoke the fire. Bit by bit new actions open up (gathering wood, building a village, exploring the world) and the resource counter turns into a text adventure with an ending. Its code is free software (MPL 2.0).

Subgenres

Interactive fictionA text-narrated adventure where you type commands in natural language, such as "open the door" or "go north", and the game describes what happens. The challenge is exploring, understanding the world from its descriptions and solving puzzles with the objects you find.
Multi-user dungeonYou connect with other people to a persistent world made only of text: you read room descriptions, type commands to move, fight or chat, and level up your character alongside other players or against them.