If you plunk down "Best terminal games" into any search engine... you're going to find a whole heck of a lot of the same results. Repeated. Over and over again.
Article after article listing the same text-based, simplified versions of Space Invaders, Tetris, and Sudoku.
Which is fine. We need fun little versions of those games in our Linux (or macOS, or Windows) shell.
But... what if you're looking for something... more? Deeper games. More visually impressive games. But still entirely in your text-mode shell?
It was for this very reason that I published -- some time back -- a list of the "Best Command-Line-Only Games". And, while that first list is -- indeed -- truly awesome... we have only scratched the surface of amazing terminal games.
So buckle up, Buttercup. Because I've got some more awesome text-mode games for you. Behold! Part 2!
Gorched
Scorched Earth (aka "The Mother of All Games") was a mainstay of DOS gaming in the early 1990s.
Take turns launching a variety of munitions (with adjusted angles and power) at your friends. A simple, but addictive formula -- one which the "Worms" series of games has used for years.
And "Gorched" recreates the core of that game... entirely in ANSI / ASCII art. All right in your terminal.
Awesome, right? The darn thing even has clouds floating through the sky. Not too shabby for a Shell-only game.
DOOM-ASCII
What if you could play DOOM... entirely in a terminal?
Not a 2D recreation... the actual game. 3D. But... you know... in ASCII art instead of pixels?
Yeah. It's real.
I'm not kidding here. It's DOOM. And it's playable.
How rad is that?!
Curse of War
Here's a slightly unconventional Real-Time Strategy game: Curse of War.
The overall mechanics are pretty simple and approachable: move your armies, build your infrastructure, get more resources. But you don't build and maneuver a bunch of specific units. It's much more... high level.
Pokete - Grey Edition
This is, essentially, a Pokemon like game. For Linux. In ASCII art.
Which... awesome.
Simple. Recognizable. Yeah, it's Pokemon. Kinda.
Battles. Exploration. It's all here. And, while there are some rough edges, the overall game is not too darn shabby!
Wolfentext3D
Take the overall look of Wolfenstein 3D. Implement it entirely in a 3D ASCII engine.
It's not really much like the original game which inspired it. It's more of a simple maze game. But it looks like Wolfenstein 3D in the terminal. Which is nifty.
Impressive, right? And it runs on Windows, Mac, & Linux (though it does require Ruby).
GameShell
This one is a little... different.
It's a shell game... built entirely to teach people who to use UNIX style shell commands.
The player goes on a series of missions in a fantasy world... and the only way to accomplish your goals... is to learn to use commands like "ls" and "pwd".
Nifty, right?
Brogue: Community Edition
You can't go wrong with a good Rogue-like! Hack! Slash! ASCII!
And Brogue is a truly excellent one.
Randomly generated, 26-level dungeon. Both complex and visually pleasing. While there are oh-so-many Rogue-like games in this world, Brogue is worth at least a quick look.
That brings us to the end of this list. If you haven't checked out the previous list, I highly recommend it. There are a great many, truly fantastic text-mode games in this world... and it would be a shame to miss out on any of them.
