COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE

This game was not only the first text adventure game ever, but also the game that inspired many rogue-like and role-playing elements in the games that were to come. Exploring a mysterious cave to find  the rumoured riches comes with simple and effective  sets of commands and the narrative unfolding of the story that is entertaining and conversational enough to keep you interested throughout. Even some words and sentences from the game became concepts in later games. For a pre-80s computer game this must have been a true revelation.

I played this game on  my ZX as a kid, and I greatly enjoyed playing it and looking at the accompanying pics , but when  a friend of mine recently posted the news of the original version being available online I had to try it, realizing I enjoyed it more. It probably had to do with the absense of pics and the feats of imagination that make the game so enjoyable.Playing a book and not a movie. And this comes from someone who never enjoyed text adventure games that much anyhow.

A true gem that needs to be played and appreciated.

 http://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire/exclusives/colossal-cave-adventure

ROGUE

I've been a fan of roguelike games for a while now, but it wasn't until the local computer magazine ("Svet Kompjutera")  went into the nature and the origins of the genre  that made me go back and try the game the whole genre was named after. Boy was I  surprised! What I thought was the result of an amassed experience of a history of titles within the genre basically boiled down to one single game. Everything one loves about a roguelike is here: permadeath, text terminals, procedurally generated levels, ludicrously hard gameplay, procedurally-created levels,suspense,looting and dungeon crawling, sprites positions etc. Let go of your thirst for the graphically demanding games and try this gem, you'll enjoy it immensely. The rudimentary ascii graphics will spark your imagination beyond anything you've seen in this genre  so far.