MUDs & Text Games
147 sites
http://ifarchive.org/
The Interactive Fiction Archive is a massive preservation project that has collected thousands of text adventures, development tools, essays, hint files, and walkthroughs since 1992. Managed by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, it serves as the foundational cultural memory for the interactive fiction community, offering free public access to decades of IF history.
https://logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom
Zoom is a free, open-source interpreter for Z-Code, TADS, and Hugo interactive fiction formats, supporting classic Infocom titles like Zork as well as modern text adventures. Available for OS X and Unix-like systems, it includes plugin support for multiple story formats and comes with a downloadable manual.
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.
https://nightfall.org/
Nightfall is one of the oldest continuously running MUDs in existence, operating since 1990 and offering a rich text-based multiplayer world with over 100 quests, multiple guilds, and diverse races. Visitors can connect via telnet or a built-in web client, and the site provides extensive documentation including a quickstart guide, lore, maps, and player help resources.
http://eotmud.com/
End of Time is a free, text-based Multi-User Dungeon built around the beloved worlds of Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Secret of Mana, offering players a unique multiplayer RPG experience in familiar Square Enix settings. The site covers races, classes, clans, world lore, and gameplay mechanics, with links to recommended MUD clients and an active wiki for deeper exploration.
https://www.gammon.com.au/
Nick Gammon's software solutions page is home to MUSHclient, a popular MUD/MUSH client, alongside utility programs, electronics resources focused on Arduino and microprocessors, and a weaving program called Weavedraft. The site blends hobbyist programming tools with practical software downloads, making it a useful stop for MUD enthusiasts and tinkerers alike.
http://plover.net/~pscion/inform7.html
Ron Newcomb's in-depth technical guide to Inform 7, the natural-language programming language used to create interactive fiction, written specifically for experienced programmers coming from conventional languages. Covering everything from types and rulebooks to grammar quirks and low-level hacking, it serves as a comprehensive bridge between traditional coding concepts and I7's unique paradigm.
https://people.well.com/user/vision/muse.html
Created by Isaac and Jeffrey on The WELL, this early 1990s page serves as a guide to the world of MUSEs, covering how to connect to virtual worlds like OceanaMUSE, BridgeMUSE, and MariMUSE via the MUSENET gateway. It includes links to server code, a quickstart guide, MUD lists, and technical and academic reports on MU* environments.
https://www.topmudsites.com/
Top MUD Sites is a long-running ranking directory that catalogued the best MUDs and text-based RPGs on the internet, ordered by visitor votes and featuring a database of hundreds of games. Though now read-only and going inactive, it preserves an all-time top 100 list covering classics like Aardwolf, Achaea, and Discworld alongside forums, reviews, and articles about the MUD genre.
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.