Text-based game

All text-based games have been well documented since at least the 1960s, when teleprinters were interlaced with mainframe computers as a form of input, where the output was printed on paper.

Strictly speaking, text-based means employing an encoding system of characters designed to be printable as text data.

[4] Text-based games trace as far back as teleprinters in the 1960s, when they were installed on early mainframe computers as an input-and-output form.

At that time, video terminals were expensive and being experimented as "glass teletypes",[5] and the user would submit commands via the teleprinter interfaced with the mainframe, the output being printed on paper.

These computers were often directed via text-based terminal emulators[10] to hobbyist-run bulletin board systems (BBSes), which tended to be accessible—often freely—by area codes to cut costs from more distant communications.

[10] However, terminal emulators are still in use today, and people continue playing MUDs (multi-user dungeon) and exploring interactive fiction.

[17] MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat.

The roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement.