A Game With No Pictures

You can look down on the idea of it all you want but command-line games have their place. Not only are there situations where you need them but in a way, not having any graphics sometimes allows them to focus on other aspects of gameplay that makes them better. I was installing a new operating system on my computer today but I messed up somewhere and ended up with no Desktop Environment. Imagine turning on your computer one day and where you usually get:

“Hi, welcome to your computer [insert lots of fancy graphics and stuff], please pick who you want to log in as and I’ll give you a desktop with buttons and icons that will show you programs in little windows and let you click on things to do stuff.”

you now instead get this:

yourcomputer login: _

 

This is exactly what happened to me. Anyway, it turns out that with my humble 20kbps connection a whole desktop environment can take more than just an hour or two to do download. Surprisingly to some, it also turns out that you can be quite productive without one. Being on holiday I had no work to do and found myself with some time to kill so I made myself something nice to eat and found a “no graphics” game to entertain me while I waited for the rest of my OS to download.

I ended up playing NetHack, a game which I think everyone should play at least once, even just for a few minutes. I remembered playing it on an old Windows ME computer many holidays ago and being addicted despite its apparent lack of hi-tech graphics.

NetHack: Dungeon Level 3

NetHack: Dungeon Level 3

The game has a lot of levels and it makes them up each time you play so it’s never the same. Maybe I just suck but I find it quite challenging. There are so many things you can do in the game I probably don’t even know half of them; it allows things like writing whatever you want on the floor you’re standing on and in other places.

Anyway, I think I’ve said enough. Games like this exist and they are fun, sometimes even more fun than “normal” games. I found this especially nice when I was stuck without any graphics. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Have you ever played a similar game? Do you think this is silly and pointless? Are you glad I wrote about this because now you might try it? If you have any comments or ideas just write them below in the comment box.