MUDs & Text Games
147 sites
https://dark-legacy.com/index.php
Dark Legacy is a free browser-accessible MUD (multi-user dungeon) set in the fantasy world of Alora, offering players 40 races, multiple classes, crafting, pet training, dungeon exploration, and player-built structures. Created by Daan van Yperen and running for over a decade, it features an extensive character customization system with ancestries, starsigns, and hundreds of physical traits.
http://forum.ifzentrale.de/viewtopic.php?t=1249
A German-language forum thread dedicated to interactive fiction and text adventures, featuring a user-contributed German translation of the Undum tutorial by Ian Millington. The post by StJohn Limbo aims to help German-speaking authors create CYOA and multiple-choice adventures using the Undum framework, lowering the barrier for non-English speakers.
https://cybersphere.net/
The Cybersphere Wiki is the official player reference for CyberSphere, a cyberpunk-themed Role-Playing MOO set in a dystopian future city called New Carthage, complete with wastelands, megacorporations, and a matrix network. Visitors will find detailed guides on character creation, in-game mechanics, factions, gangs, skills, and everything needed to navigate this text-based online world.
https://mail.dworkin.nl/pipermail/mud-dev-archive
A comprehensive mailing list archive for mud-dev, a long-running discussion community dedicated to MUD and online game development, spanning from 1996 through 2006. Developers and designers of text-based and early online games exchanged technical and design ideas here, making this archive a rich historical record of MUD development discourse.
http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle
Gargoyle is a free, open-source interactive fiction interpreter that supports all major IF formats, eliminating the need to download separate players for each game type. It stands out for its exceptional typography features including subpixel font rendering, kerning, ligatures, and smart quotes, making it a polished and thoughtfully crafted tool for IF enthusiasts.
https://crawl.tildeverse.org/
The Tildeverse DCSS Server hosts a public instance of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, the classic roguelike game, accessible via SSH connection from any Linux, BSD, or macOS terminal. Visitors can play console games, browse morgue files and player recordings, and find setup scripts for tilde server operators who want to offer DCSS access to their own users.
http://spagmag.org/archives
SPAG is a long-running magazine dedicated to interactive fiction, with a complete archive of 64 issues spanning from 1994 to 2016 covering reviews, articles, and commentary on text adventures and parser games. Maintained as a historical archive by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, it offers a remarkable window into decades of IF community discourse and criticism.
http://mystic-adventure.org/
Mystic Adventure is a free-to-play medieval fantasy MUD (multi-user dungeon) featuring over 20,000 rooms, unique classes and races, creative quests, and a welcoming player community. The site serves as the official hub for the game, offering guides on connecting via MUD clients, character creation, crafting, clans, and maps for new and veteran players alike.
http://t2tmud.org/
The Two Towers MUD is a free text-based multiplayer roleplaying game set entirely within Tolkien's Middle-earth, recreating over 100,000 rooms from Mithlond to Mordor. Established in 1994 and still actively developed, it offers hundreds of quests, player guilds, and a global community immersed in the events of the Lord of the Rings.
http://tads.org/
TADS (Text Adventure Development System) is the official home of a free, professional-grade authoring toolkit for creating interactive fiction, maintained by Michael J. Roberts. The site offers downloads, comprehensive manuals, code examples, and community links for both TADS 2 and TADS 3, making it an essential hub for serious IF developers.