This is a MUDlike.
In this game, your imagination is the GPU.
You type. You read. You think. You die.
No tutorials. No minimap. No hand-holding.
Just you, your wits, and a cursor.
─────────────── COMMANDS ───────────────
move ─ north south east west up down (or n s e w u d)
look ─ look around, look rat to examine
fight ─ kill rat to attack, flee to run
items ─ get, drop, inventory, equip
help ─ help lists commands, help kill explains one
────────── PROTIPS ──────────
Tab autocompletes commands and targets
↑ ↓ recall command history
Abbreviate freely: inv eq k rat l
─────────────── ☠ ───────────────
The game is hard. You will die. Learn why. Try again.
north, south, east, west, up, down
n | s | e | w | u | d
look [direction | target]
l | examine
listen [target]
Hear ambient sounds or a specific creature
open direction | door
close direction | door
unlock direction | door
lock direction | door
kill target
k | attack
flee
get item [container]
take
drop item
put item container
from container get | put item
inventory
i | inv
equip item
eq | wear | wield
remove item
use item
Consume potions, activate items
score
sc | stats | fragments
skills
raise skill
worth
rest | sleep | wake | stand
meditate
say message
Speak to NPCs in the room. Some respond to specific words.
shout message
Louder. May be heard in adjacent rooms.
help [topic | command]
?
quest [quest_id]
hint
Toggle contextual hints on/off (on by default)
prompt [format]
Customize your command prompt
colors
Display color test pattern
save | load | quit
/config font
List available fonts
/config font number
Select font by number (see /config font for list)
/config font size [8-72]
View or set font size
Type kill <target> to attack. Combat is real-time and tick-based.
Your attack speed depends on your weapon and dexterity.
Type flee to attempt escape. Success depends on your skills and available exits.
Fleeing costs stamina and may fail. You cannot flee if there are no exits.
When you die, you lose some progress and respawn at a safe location.
Death is a teacher. Pay attention to what killed you.
Target by keyword: get sword matches "rusty sword"
Partial matches work: get sw also matches "rusty sword"
For multiples: 2.rat targets the second rat
This works for items, mobs, and doors throughout all commands.
Weapons go in your main hand. Armor covers various body slots.
Use score to see your status and equipment.
Better gear directly improves your combat effectiveness.
Bags, chests, and corpses can hold items and money.
Use look <container> to see contents.
Use from <container> get <item> to retrieve things.
Items have weight. Strength determines how much you can carry.
Check your carry capacity with score.
The world is large. Thousands of rooms to discover.
Use look to see room descriptions and available exits.
Pay attention to descriptions ─ they contain hints and hidden details.
Some passages have doors. Use open <direction> to open them.
Some doors are locked. You'll need to find keys or other means.
Not everything wants to kill you. Some creatures can be talked to.
Use look <npc> to examine them before attacking.
Use say <message> to speak. Some NPCs respond to specific words.
Pence (p) ─ Base unit
Shilling (s) ─ 12 pence
Crown (c) ─ 5 shillings (60 pence)
Money can be found on the ground, in containers, or looted from enemies.
Use worth to see how much you carry. Also shown in score.
Quests track your progress through the world's stories.
Use quest to see active and completed quests.
Use quest <name> to view details of a specific quest.
Your progress saves automatically. The world resets, you don't.
Strength ─ Max HP, carry capacity, melee damage
Dexterity ─ Max stamina, attack speed, flee chance
Intelligence ─ Magic potency, mental resistance
Stats start capped at 50. View with score.
Swordsmanship ─ Swords
Fencing ─ Rapiers, daggers
Macing ─ Blunt weapons
Archery ─ Bows, crossbows
Wrestling ─ Unarmed combat
Tactics ─ Combat damage bonus
Anatomy ─ Critical hit chance
Skills start capped at 50. View with skills.
Use it to gain it. Swing a sword → Swordsmanship gains.
Stats gain passively from related skill use.
You cannot train past your cap. Caps start at 50 (human limit).
Slain enemies release essence. Use meditate to absorb it.
Fragments are the currency of transcendence ─ raising caps beyond human limits.
Use raise <skill|stat> to spend fragments and raise a cap by 10.
Awakened maximum: 100. Fragments are never spent on direct gains.
Your position affects HP and SP regeneration:
Standing ─ Slowest regen. Required for combat, movement, item use.
Resting ─ Moderate regen. Can look, check inventory, view score.
Sleeping ─ Fastest regen. Very limited actions.
Meditating ─ Absorbs fragments from slain enemies in the room.
HP only regenerates out of combat. SP always regenerates (slower during combat).
Use rest, sleep, wake, or stand to change position.
Before life, there was only the barren world and the seed that fell upon it.
The seed carried within it the raw stuff of creation, fragments of pure potential. When it struck the stone, it shattered. Millions of fragments scattered across the world, and where they settled, life took root.
Every living thing carries a fragment within it. But fragments are not souls. Souls are identity, memory, the shape of who you are. They form around fragments like pearls around grit, but they are separate things. When a creature dies, its soul departs. The fragment remains, drifting back to be claimed by new life.
During the shattering, three fragments of exceptional size broke away together. They coalesced into awareness. They opened eyes and looked upon the world they had helped create.
They were the Three Sisters: Althenne, Kalith, and Ren.
─────────────────────────
Althenne was steady. Vigilant. She believed their role had sacred limits: they were stewards, not creators.
Ren was the warmth between them. Quick to laugh. The one who reminded her sisters that eternity was worth enjoying.
And Kalith was curious. She watched the dragons with their young. She felt something she could not name. The sisters were unique, parentless, childless, forever alone in their nature. Every other creature could create something that carried part of them forward. The sisters could not.
Kalith wanted a child.
She tried to create life. The results were monstrous,twisted things that could not survive. She studied harder. The failures multiplied. Althenne watched in disapproving silence. Ren saw only her sister's grief.
─────────────────────────
Ren went to Althenne. Not to condemn but to help. Together, perhaps they could ease Kalith's loneliness.
Althenne agreed to speak with their sister. But she did not come to help. She came to end it.
The confrontation was not a conversation. Years of silent disapproval poured out at once. Kalith, ashamed and defensive, lashed out. She did not mean to strike with such force.
Ren stepped between them.
She broke apart. Her fragments scattered. Her soul departed to wherever souls go.
In her horror, Kalith reached out. She pulled Ren's fragments into herself, desperate to keep some part of her alive. But fragments are not souls. What she held was only power. Raw, empty, meaningless without the identity that had shaped it.
The warmth was gone. And it was her fault.
─────────────────────────
Kalith fled underground and began trying to rebuild Ren from fragments. It could not work. Ren's soul was gone forever. But she could not stop trying. It was all she knew how to do.
She gathered more fragments. She harvested them from the living. The things she built were not Ren. They were monsters. But she kept trying. Every kill added to the weight of what she had become.
The war was long. The toll was catastrophic. At the end, Althenne's allies gave themselves willingly,releasing their souls, giving their fragments to fuel one final act. With their power, Althenne imprisoned Kalith in crystalline stone.
The Voidstone.
Then Althenne diminished. The silence where her friends had been was unbearable. She walked into a distant forest and did not come out. Where she sleeps, the trees have grown massive and strange.
─────────────────────────
One guardian refused to sacrifice himself. Ashenmor, now called the Stonewatcher. Whether from fear or hope that Kalith could be saved, he could not do it.
Althenne was not angry. She was disappointed. She gave him a burden: watch over the prison until the end of days.
Ages passed. The art of Awakening was lost. The Voidstone sank deep beneath a mountain. Miners found the riches surrounding it. They delved too deep. They found the prison and tried to move it... fools who saw a the voidstone and thought wealth.
The first cracks appeared. From them, monsters spilled forth.
─────────────────────────
That was twenty years ago. The Stonewatcher recreated Awakening, forcing fragments into volunteers, granting them the power to absorb what they kill. Four in five die in the process. Those who survive owe eight years of service.
You survived.
The cracks widen. The monsters multiply. Deep in the ruins, Kalith dreams, mindless, reaching for something she cannot remember. She has forgotten Ren's face. She has forgotten why she started any of this. Only the hunger remains.
The prison cannot be resealed. It must be shattered and Kalith ended. The Stonewatcher does not know how. He has not spoken to Althenne in centuries. He knows exactly where she is. He has never gone to her.
He is afraid of what she might say.
Before World of Warcraft, before EverQuest, before graphics cards could render a single goblin, there were MUDs. Multi-User Dungeons. Entirely text-based online games from the late '80s and '90s. No visuals at all. You'd connect to a server through a terminal and read something like:
"You are standing in a dimly lit tavern. A grizzled bartender eyes you suspiciously. Exits: North, East."
And you'd type commands: go north, attack goblin, take sword. Your imagination did all the rendering. These were multiplayer worlds with dozens or hundreds of people exploring, fighting, and roleplaying together in pure text.
A MUDlike is a modern game that draws from that tradition. Text-heavy or fully text-based, with the same feel: typing commands, reading descriptions, building the world in your head. Think of it as a video game crossed with a novel.
Strip out the multiplayer. It's just you, the text, and your imagination. The social layer is gone, but depth remains:exploration, combat, systems, atmosphere. A solitary journey through a world made of words.
This game carries no old MUD code, it's built from scratch. But spiritually, it descends from Envy22 MUDs, a branch of the Merc/Diku family tree that flourished in the mid-'90s. Envy muds were scrappy, community-driven creations hosted on university servers and humming PCs in closets, each one hacked and tweaked into something unique. The feel of those worlds, the pacing, the mechanics, the texture - that's what this game is channeling.
More specifically, it pays homage to Abandoned Reality, a MUD founded in 1996 by Erwin Andreasen, known in-game as Drylock. Drylock wasn't just running a MUD, he was a pillar of the whole Merc/Envy development scene. He shared code freely, wrote documentation, built tools like mudFTP, and co-created the famous Bartle Test that categorized player types. Abandoned Reality had atmosphere and a devoted following, and Drylock's ethos of building, sharing, and nurturing worlds shaped a generation of developers. He'd probably appreciate seeing that spirit carried forward.
Traditional MUDs were endless by design. You'd grind, explore, level, repeat forever. The world persisted; you just passed through it.
This game is different.
It's completely open, go wherever pulls you. But it has a real story with a real ending. You're not grinding into infinity. You're going somewhere. The writing is sharp and atmospheric, the kind that earns your attention rather than demanding it. You get the depth and discovery of a MUD: the systems, the texture, the imagination-driven experience, but shaped into something with narrative weight and closure.
It's what a MUD might have become if someone had asked: what if this actually ended?
If you've played AI Dungeon, a text-based Discord RPG bot, or a choose-your-own-adventure game, you've touched something adjacent to this tradition. But those are usually loose, improvisational, engine-driven. This is authored. Crafted. There's a destination.
Developer commands. Prefix with !
!inspect target
Show mob/item internal stats
!teleport area | room_id
Instant travel to area safe room or specific room
!spawn proto_id
Spawn mob or item by prototype ID
!set frag value
!set money value
!set stat str|dex|int value
!set skill name value
!set cap name value
!set vital hp|sp value
!lock direction | door
!unlock direction | door
!quest reset quest_id
!reload [prog_name]
Reload Lua progs (all or specific)
!wipe
Delete save, reload fresh (confirms)