HACKER Q&A
📣 simonebrunozzi

Good text-based games like “A dark room” or “Dwarf fortress”?


I am doing some research around the simplest game interface (but the game doesn't have to be simple!), mostly strategy games but other types might work too.

A great example is "A dark room". Another example (although it's a bit too complex for what I'm researching) would be Dwarf fortress.

Any other intriguing games that you can share?

Also, if you were to build such a game from scratch, what languages/platforms would you use? e.g. "A dark room" is open source and uses mostly Javascript [0].

Thanks for any suggestion!

[0]: https://github.com/doublespeakgames/adarkroom


  👤 Kototama Accepted Answer ✓
What a cool question.

I know Brogue (https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/). It's similar to Nethack but with a more user-friendly UI. The game has less depth than Nethack but the enemies AIs are supposed to be more developed.

There is also Caves of Qud (http://www.cavesofqud.com/) in this subculture.

There are also old games that are only textual: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure


👤 thesuperbigfrog
Nethack (https://www.nethack.org/) is a favorite classic and quite a challenging game.