Best Text-Based Games 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.

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Quarantine Circular In the middle of a world-ending pandemic, a group of scientists discover the galaxy has been watching. From the award-winning team behind Thomas Was Alone and Subsurface Circular, Quarantine Circular is the next mutation in text-based adventure.

Price 5.99€
Rating 8.2
Release 22 May 2018
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 -95% 0.60€
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% 0.43€
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
Sorry, James JAMES_GARNER zEiaQe@z1l3

Price -96% 0.33€
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 -66% 2.05€
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 -79% 0.42€
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
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
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 -64% 1.80€
Rating 9.0
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% 0.42€
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 -70% 1.22€
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 -85% 1.75€
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
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!

Price 19.99€
Rating 8.3
Release 06 Oct 2016
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.

Price 18.49€
Rating 7.5
Release 22 Sep 2016
Event[0] Event[0] is a sci-fi narrative exploration game where you build a relationship with a lonely spaceship computer to get home to Earth.

Price -88% 2.56€
Rating 7.7
Release 14 Sep 2016
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!…

Price 4.99€
Rating 7.9
Release 10 Aug 2016
Idling to Rule the Gods Idling to Rule the Gods is a free to play Idle-Game with a lot of content and some Minigames. Depending on your play-style, you can play it fast or slow. Either way it can be fun for hundreds of hours!

Price Free to play
Rating 8.2
Release 27 May 2016
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.

Price -70% 2.40€
Rating 7.5
Release 25 Feb 2016
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.

Price -78% 2.28€
Rating 8.4
Release 02 Feb 2016
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.

Price Free to play
Rating 8.4
Release 08 Jan 2016
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?

Price Free to play
Rating 8.5
Release 05 Jan 2016
Emily is Away Emily is Away is an interactive story. Create a screenname and choose your path through the branching narrative.

Price Free to play
Rating 8.7
Release 20 Nov 2015
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.

Price -97% 0.42€
Rating 7.6
Release 28 Jul 2015
SpaceCorn You're a unicorn in an alien planet. Now what?

Price 0.99€
Rating 6.0
Release 23 Jun 2015

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