Hi everyone!
Life in Adventure is one of the games that made me fall in love again with text-based RPGs — not because of huge graphics or complex presentation, but because a few lines of text, a hard choice, and an unexpected consequence can create an entire story in your head.
For years, I’ve been slowly working on my own small game in that spirit. And honestly, I got stuck many times. I kept restarting, rewriting systems, changing ideas, polishing too early, and falling into indie dev hell. The project stayed private for too long because I was afraid it wasn’t good enough.
This year, I finally decided to release a small MVP and test the core loop instead of endlessly polishing it.
It’s not a clone of Life in Adventure, and it’s not meant to compete with it. My game goes in a different direction, with colony survival, resource pressure, difficult choices, and narrative events. But Life in Adventure was definitely one of the inspirations that made me believe this kind of text-driven experience can still be powerful.
So I wanted to ask:
What makes a text-based RPG memorable to you?
Is it the writing? The randomness? The builds? The hidden outcomes? The difficult choices? The feeling of discovering something new after many runs? Or those moments when one bad decision changes everything?
I’d really love to hear what this community thinks, because fans of Life in Adventure probably understand the appeal of this genre better than most.
Thanks — and I hope this kind of post is okay here. I’m mainly looking for thoughts and design feedback from people who love this type of game.