Text Adventure RPG Recommendations

Just curious if anyone can recommend a text adventure game with RPG elements in it.

Thanks!

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Treasures of a slaver’s kingdom is pretty good. Also Leadlight.

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I’m curious about this, too. I’m not sure I’ve seen a convincing combat system in a text adventure yet, so if it’s out there I wanna see it!

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I like Kerkerkruip:

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Agnieszka Trzaska has some good ones:

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Beyond Zork is one of the quintessential examples, although the RPG elements are light.

There is a RPG tag on IFDB with more than 400 games but god only knows how accurate that is…!

And then there is some stuff that comes to mind like Westfront PC which derives from old-school MUDs. Nowadays MUDs are more like MMOs but in the early days they used to actually be “solvable”. You can take a look for example at some of the posts from Renga in Blue.

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I guess it depends a lot on what is meant by rpg elements. There are several without turn based combat more like resource management.

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I meant more like, stats, equipment, spells, abilities, randomness, but I definitely wouldn’t discount any game that focused on resource management. I would categorize resource management as a strategy/simulation game over that of an RPG, but there are many rule systems and many hybrids that deserve attention.

Recommend one if you’ve got it rattling around in the back of your mind. Just preface it with the core mechanic so it doesn’t confuse any potential players who might only like boring, traditional, roll the dice type games. :wink:


Totally not a text adventure, but the best equipment management game I have ever played is…

The developer is working on a Steam version that is in early access. It’s so addictive.

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Seconding Kerkerkruip; that game is a really fun time, and there’s so much content that every run feels different.

A Matter of Heist Urgency is a fun mini-RPG. Battles are a mix of quick thinking and solving puzzles.

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Had to sign up for this one. Eamon ticks a lot of those boxes, any Eamon really.

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Got there first! :grinning:

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I made this one The Little Match Girl 3: The Escalus Manifold - Details

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What is Eamon? IFDB says it’s a series with over 200 entries by different authors?!

EDIT:
Answered my own question.

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This rabbit hole goes down about a quarter mile. The Eamon wiki is the modern authoritative reference.

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This thread inspired me to finally try Kerkerkruip. I got killed pretty quickly on my first three tries, but on my fourth try I finally won a battle. I’m curious to see how this plays out.

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There’s also this:

… although it was written primarily as an early Inform7 tech demo. From what I’ve read it’s not particularly well-balanced or fun to play.

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That is incorrect! It is, in fact, fun to play.

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When it comes to what kind of randomized combat is fun, it seems to be highly subjective. For instance, I found Kerkerkruip to be too frustrating, because it isn’t just randomized combat, it is randomized enemies and a lot of other stuff so that for a given start, you might not stand a chance.

In contrast, I like the more simple Eamon combat when it is done right, such as in Leadlight or Redemption.

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That is true of a lot of popular games, in particular card solitaires. Part of the fun is figuring out if a seemingly impossible situation might in fact be winnable.

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