Text-Based Hidden Gems on Steam
Unlike generic lists, our game recommendations use a rigorous analysis of Steam user reviews to identify and feature only the best, community-validated text-based games.
Filters & Lists
Loading...
Wayhaven Chronicles: Book One
Your first case as a detective is forcing you to open your eyes to a world bigger than you thought. Or maybe it's better to keep them closed. Seems the supernatural didn’t get the memo that nothing exciting ever happens in the little town of Wayhaven.
Omen Exitio: Plague
Investigate a paranormal disease that threatens to eradicate humanity in this unsettling Lovecraftian adventure, inspired by the choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks of the 80s and 90s. Your choices will determine the story, your character’s destiny… and the future of humanity.
Loot Box Quest
The spiritual successor to DLC Quest! Earn that sense of pride and accomplishment in the way that only repetitive clicking can deliver. It's a clicker game, so chill out, have a few chuckles, and watch numbers get bigger while the industry burns around us all.
Sorry, James
JAMES_GARNER zEiaQe@z1l3
Don't Make Love
Assume the role of a praying mantis in a relationship dilemma. Torn between their mutual love and the instinct to have sex – which could lead to the male mantis’s death – the couple is on the verge of making a decision. Type anything you want in response to your partner during this life-changing conversation.
All You Can Eat
Meet a modern hero of our times, a man so lazy he decided to quit his job and just spend his life inside an All-you-can-eat diner. As years go by, his freeloading nature becomes legend, but then a tragedy occurs - the diner is about to close down! Will he settle down and get a regular job? Never!!!
LoveKami -Useless Goddess-
After finding a collapsed goddess on the street, Sho takes her home. Akane is an Aragami, a goddess that only thinks about herself and causes trouble to those around her. Can Sho, with the help of Inori and Maika, help Akane reform into a perfect goddess?
Detective Butler: Maiden Voyage Murder
Follow Detective Butler and his sidekick Gilligan as they solve a locked-room murder during a haunted cruise ship's maiden voyage. Can you solve the mystery before Detective Butler reveals the answer?
Open Sorcery
BEL/S is an Elemental Firewall: a fire elemental bound with C++ code to protect a network of people and places. She can learn things, develop relationships, and even gain sapience. Or she can burn everything with fire. It's up to you.
A House of Many Doors
Explore the House, a parasite dimension that steals from other worlds, in a train that scuttles on mechanical legs.
LoveKami -Divinity Stage-
MoeNovel's exciting new original title, LoveKami -Divinity Stage-, debuts on Steam in English, bringing a fun and energetic tale filled with magic and music!
The Silver Case
The Silver Case – the debut title from world-renowned developer SUDA51 has been fully remastered and localized to English for the first time ever!
hackmud
hackmud is a retro cyberpunk RPG where you play a digital persona in a chaotic, unpredictable, and often goofy abandoned internet. Enter a 90s hacker movie filled with scripts, scams, and sabotage. Explore the world of digital secrets and forge your legacy through cunning, creativity, or disruption.
Winter Novel
Snow, dullness, depression. Constant dissatisfaction with work and superiors and feeling like there is no escape. Is this what life will always be? Perhaps… but I can always hope for change to be just around the corner!…
Age of Gladiators
"Age of Gladiators" is a single-player strategy/management sim set at the height of the bloody gladiatorial games in ancient Rome. As your fighters increase in level, it will be up to you to decide how to forge their attributes and abilities.
Sorcery! Parts 1 and 2
An epic adventure in a land of monsters, traps and magic. Journey across the deadly Shamutanti Hills and through Kharé, Cityport of Thieves. Armed with your sword and over fifty spells with weird and wonderful effects, embark on a narrative adventure of a thousand choices where every one is remembered.
Sepia Tears
A visual novel about a memory that a boy named Mark tries very hard to forget, and a girl named Myra who unearths it.
The Sad Story of Emmeline Burns
A short lesbian / yuri visual novel set in England. Our heroine, Toma Andrews, meets a ghost girl wearing an old-fashioned nightgown in a graveyard who calls herself Emmeline. Just who is she, and how did she die?
King of Dragon Pass
Create your own epic saga of survival, mythology and diplomacy! Rule your clan, make strategic decisions that affect the game world, win battles and expand your influence in this unique mix of RPG, strategy and story-telling.
Choice of the Deathless
Battle demons and undead attorneys, and win souls to pay back your student loans! At the elite demonic-law firm of Varkath Nebuchadnezzar Stone, you'll depose a fallen god, find romance, and maybe even make partner, if you don't lose your own soul first.
Heroes Rise: The Prodigy
Do you have what it takes to become a legendary Powered hero? "Heroes Rise" is an epic interactive novel where your choices control the story. The game is entirely text-based--without graphics or sound effects--and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination. How high will you rise?
Monster Loves You!
Live the life of a Monster, from birth to elderhood and beyond, making decisions that affect the world of Monsters and Humans. Solve problems. Meet animals and interesting people. Get to know them. Eat them. Make your own story!