A text adventure (or "interactive fiction") is the type of game commonly found on computer servers before someone had the idea to draw a map in ASCII characters, thus creating the roguelike games including NetHack. As the NetHack Guidebook explains it: don't trust wiki For an example of what a text adventure game would be like, see the strip of 8 March 2005 in Dudley's dungeon. Or you can read the demonstration in the next section.