In the game, the player moves through a series of connected caves, arranged as the vertices of a dodecahedron, as they hunt a monster named the Wumpus.

The game sparked multiple variations and expanded versions and was ported to several systems, including the TI-99/4A home computer.

The Wumpus monster has appeared in several forms in media since 1973, including other video games, a novella, and Magic: The Gathering cards.

Hunt the Wumpus is a text-based adventure game set in a series of caves connected by tunnels.

The player then elects to either move to one of those connected caves or shoot one of their five "crooked arrows", named for their ability to change direction while in flight.

If the player enters a cave number that is not connected to where the arrow is, the game picks a valid option at random.

Yob was inspired to make a game that used a non-grid pattern, where the player would move through points connected through some other type of topology.

While playtesting the game, Yob found it unexciting that the Wumpus always stayed in one place, and so changed it to be able to move.

[10] In addition to the original BASIC games, versions of Hunt the Wumpus have been created for numerous other systems.

[15] Hunt the Wumpus has been cited as an early example of a survival horror game; the book Vampires and Zombies claims that it was an early example of the genre, while the paper "Restless dreams in Silent Hill" states that "from a historical perspective the genre's roots lie in Hunt the Wumpus".

[23] The textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, with editions published since 1995, uses a version of this game as one of the examples.