MUDs & Text Games
147 sites
https://agesofdespair.net/
Ages of Despair is a long-running LP MUD set in a medieval fantasy world, active since 1998 and built by a dedicated team of wizards and coders. Visitors can explore information about races, classes, guilds, and world lore before connecting via telnet to dive into the adventure.
https://elissablack.com/swords-of-freeport
Elissa Black, a writer and game developer, announces Swords of Freeport, a text-mode ANSI-colour multiplayer game for Linux and Mac inspired by classic BBS Door games and MUDs like Legend of the Red Dragon. The post dives into her nostalgic love of once-a-day text RPGs from the 90s and details her development progress toward an MVP release on Itch.io.
https://aardwolf.com/
Aardwolf is a long-running free text-based MUD set in the fantasy world of Andolor, featuring 28 character classes, hundreds of quests, real-time overhead maps, and a thriving multiplayer community. The site serves as the official hub for the game, offering a web client to play directly, a wiki, Lua coding documentation, clan and race information, and regularly updated news about game changes.
https://retromud.org/
RetroMUD is a free, text-based online fantasy roleplaying game (MUD) featuring over 100 levels of play, six distinct worlds, and dozens of quests that players can access from desktop or mobile clients. The site serves as the official hub for the game, offering player rankings, help files, donation options, and connection instructions for a variety of MUD clients including Mudlet and MUSHClient.
https://valheru.com/
Valheru MUD is a text-based online adventure game set in a classic fantasy world, offering players an extensive selection of races, classes, multi-classing, and thousands of quests including live events with AI-driven NPCs. The site serves as the official hub for the game, providing connection guides, lore, clan info, builder resources, and community features for its international playerbase spanning Denmark, the USA, and beyond.
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://pixelscapes.com/nscape
A memorial page for NightscapeMUX, a now-defunct MUX game, featuring archival character art and splash screens recovered from an old hard drive by artist Jen Gagne. The page serves as both a farewell to former players and a showcase of the original artwork that was created for the game's website.
MUDs @ Lysator
NEW!
http://lysator.liu.se/mud/main.html
Hosted by Lysator, a Swedish academic computer society, this page serves as a hub for MUD enthusiasts featuring links to notable MUDs like NannyMUD and Svenskmud alongside general mudding resources. Visitors can find FAQs, guides on LPC coding, quest design tips, and historical materials including the proceedings from the 1st World MUD Conference 1994.
https://mud.co.uk/richard
Richard Bartle, co-creator of the original MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) and author of 'Designing Virtual Worlds', presents his personal entry point organized by hat icons covering academic work, MUD design, fiction, humor, and personal details. A landmark in gaming history, this site offers a window into the mind of one of the founding figures of online multiplayer gaming and virtual world theory.
http://kallindor.org/
Kallindor MUD is a text-based multiplayer online game built on the foundations of classic MUDs Myrradel and Alhazi Invasion, offering over 100 original areas, 18 races, and 5 base classes with 15 additional subclasses. Players can dive into hack-and-slash combat, clan warfare, PK systems, and a meta progression system with hundreds of unique skills and spells.