Looking for a classic-styled text adventure? ASCII Quest has just been released on Itch.Io, and best of all? This interactive fiction adventure is free!
Here’s the plot for ASCII Quest from the Itch.Io page, which is also where it’s playable!
- The story takes place in a typical medieval-fantasy village called Txtown. One morning, the Queen makes an announcement to all of her subjects: a powerful magic curse is leading to the town, a curse that only ASCII worlds can have: slowly, but inexorably, everything is turning into non-translatable characters (Like �).
- The Queen is sure that the non-translatable pest is caused by somebody, an infected who spreads the curse to damage nearby kingdoms, and capturing them will stop the plague; she, therefore, put a huge bounty on the head of this mysterious person, and whoever will bring her enough proofs will become a hero AND a very rich person.
- In all this, you are just a common villager. Will you spend the day hunting and completing random side quests? Or will you help and find the cause of the infection? (Actually, is there a cause at all? Is there a plague at all? Will this random object be useful for some quest?)
The gameplay of ASCII Quest is reminiscent of old-school, classic text adventures. Think Zork! However, there are some great, modern quality-of-life improvements.
What makes the game fascinating though, is it has some similarities with titles like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. There is also a time factor at play.
For example: When it’s 12:30 PM in the game, locations like stores will be closed for lunchtime. Different actions you perform in-game too will take up different durations as well.
ASCII Quest is perfect if you’re looking for a unique text adventure to jump into… Plus it’s free! It’s also worth checking out Heroes Of Book & Paper if you want more RPG action.
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