Best Text-Based Games on Steam

Unlike generic lists, our strategy game recommendations use a rigorous analysis of Steam user reviews to identify and feature only the best, community-validated text-based games. For those who prefer not to search, check out lists of the most played, top deals and best free to play Text-Based games on Steam.

Filters & Lists
STAY Award-winning, innovative puzzle-adventure. By communicating through your PC, you must help a kidnapped man escape captivity - in real-time. While you sleep, he is alone. When you return to your PC he has hope. Your encouragement and advice will be the difference between his salvation or despair.

Price -70% 3.59€
Rating 6.6
Release 16 May 2018
Holyday City: Reloaded Build, manage & grow your city in Holyday City: Reloaded! An idle clicker game where you're the business tycoon, expanding your metropolis. Master resource & time management to upgrade businesses and thrive. Experience the ultimate town builder adventure with Holyday City.

Price Free to play
Rating 7.8
Release 23 Apr 2018
Doodle Date Romance, seduce, and even marry your own drawings! Forget about finding true love; In Doodle Date, you create it!

Price 1.99€
Rating 6.9
Release 19 Apr 2018
Idle Adventure Idle Adventure is a text-based, multi-player online RPG game. Even without astonishing graphics or special effects, it can offer you countless hours of enjoyment.

Price Free to play
Rating 6.3
Release 13 Apr 2018
Fallen Hero: Rebirth They called you a hero; you call them fools. Use your telepathy romance old friends and fight new enemies as you become the greatest villain Los Diablos has ever known!

Price 6.89€
Rating 8.9
Release 15 Mar 2018
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.

Price 7.79€
Rating 8.5
Release 08 Mar 2018
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.

Price -96% 0.41€
Rating 8.1
Release 05 Mar 2018
Grey Hack Grey Hack is a massively multiplayer hacking simulator game. You're a hacker with full freedom to act as you wish on a vast network of procedurally generated computers.

Price 19.99€
Rating 8.6
Release 14 Dec 2017
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.

Price 0.99€
Rating 8.6
Release 13 Dec 2017
家有大貓 Nekojishi Nekojishi is a visual novel about feline beast-men, Taiwanese folklore, and the pressures and consequences that come with navigating the world of gods and spirits.

Price Free to play
Rating 8.9
Release 12 Nov 2017
Sorry, James JAMES_GARNER zEiaQe@z1l3

Price -97% 0.25€
Rating 7.6
Release 10 Nov 2017
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.

Price Free to play
Rating 7.9
Release 26 Oct 2017
Throne of Lies®: Medieval Politics The 3D online multiplayer game of social deduction and mischief, inspired by medieval politics and the Werewolf/Mafia (1986) genre. Gather 'round the tabletop, uniting allies of the realm with strategy to distinguish friend from foe.

Price Free to play
Rating 7.4
Release 29 Sep 2017
Subsurface Circular When the truth is buried, go underground. Step into this new take on text-based adventure from the award-winning team behind Thomas Was Alone and Volume. A short story that hands you the fate of the world above, as a detective looking for answers on the Subsurface Circular.

Price -85% 0.92€
Rating 9.0
Release 17 Aug 2017
MINDNIGHT Inspired by the party games Werewolf and The Resistance, MINDNIGHT is a cyberpunk online social deduction game of deceit, accusations and unpredictability. It challenges your ability to lie and detect others that are trying to be deceptive.

Price Free to play
Rating 8.2
Release 04 Aug 2017
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!!!

Price -91% 0.19€
Rating 7.6
Release 13 Jul 2017
Pixel Sketch Become the best painter in the universe in this colorful online game!

Price Free to play
Rating 7.0
Release 19 Jun 2017
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?

Price -80% 2.59€
Rating 7.5
Release 29 May 2017
Emily is Away Too Emily is Away Too is a brand new story featuring new characters and multiple different endings. Message your friends, surf the web and choose your path through this branching narrative.

Price -56% 2.20€
Rating 9.0
Release 26 May 2017
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?

Price Free to play
Rating 7.6
Release 26 May 2017
Stories Untold Stories Untold is a compilation tape of four experimental adventures, including a remaster of the original hit episode “The House Abandon”.

Price -96% 0.45€
Rating 8.4
Release 27 Feb 2017
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.

Price -73% 1.10€
Rating 9.0
Release 22 Feb 2017
A House of Many Doors Explore the House, a parasite dimension that steals from other worlds, in a train that scuttles on mechanical legs.

Price -87% 1.45€
Rating 7.9
Release 03 Feb 2017
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!

Price -80% 2.59€
Rating 7.7
Release 15 Dec 2016