I built a text-adventure game in the spirit of the old ones — green-on-black terminal, a Zork-style status line (score, turns, ranks), and no hand-holding. I gave the retro look a readability pass, so it evokes the old monitor without giving you a headache. Five old-school adventures, plus a locked sixth that unlocks if you beat all five. The problem is, I’ve been the only human testing it.

I’ve had an AI playtester run through it extensively — every room, every trap, every puzzle, every wrong turn, dozens of full runs in whatever order it felt like. What an AI can’t tell me is how this genre should feel to someone who grew up on it, and I don’t have the time to do a real playtest myself. A text adventure that can’t be gotten lost in isn’t being tested properly. So I’m asking the people who actually know this genre to do it for me.

Here’s what’s inside:

💎Lich’s Labyrinth — a bone-strewn dungeon under a dead hill. Don’t touch the pretty stones. 💎The Crimson Wake — a pirate ship at anchor. Sneak, talk, bribe, or fight your way off alive. 💎The Thing Below — a farm swallowed by a sinkhole, and something digging underneath. 💎The Star and the Bear — a gargoyle-haunted ruin. Don’t touch the wrong statue. 💎The Silent Hunger — an invisible gelatinous cube cruising a silent dungeon. Don’t blunder into it. 💎💎Beat all five and a free-roam town unlocks — AI-moderated, talk to the townsfolk and follow the rumors.

It’s built to nod to the original Zork 1 as closely as I could manage — right down to the score ranks (Master Adventurer on down), the verbosity modes, save and restore, AGAIN and IT, and the familiar phrases you remember (including a certain message about darkness and hungry things). The writing runs dry and a little wry, in the classic Infocom spirit.

This is where I need you. If you grew up on these games, you know what a text adventure should feel like — and you’ll catch what I can’t. Specifically, I’d love to know about:

😒Commands that feel like they should work but get “I don’t understand that.” 😒Dead ends — places where the game quietly becomes unwinnable 😒Deaths that feel unfair, with no warning it was coming 😒Typos, flat descriptions, anything that breaks the mood 😒Save and restore acting weird 😒And if you clear all five — does the free-roam town keep its head?

I can’t pay anybody for this — it’s a one-man show. What I can do is fix everything you find and put the names of everyone who catches a real bug in a playtesters’ credit list in the gen. It’s not much, but it’s what I’ve got.

Drop your findings in the comments here, or in the guestbook at the bottom of the gen. If you’ve ever typed “open the mailbox” with total sincerity, I’d love your eyes on this. Who’s up for breaking a dungeon?

The gen is here: https://perchance.org/totally-awesome-text-adventures