Play Quest Online

Quest on MS-DOS is one of those games that feels like digging up a time capsule—except instead of old photos, you get cryptic text commands and the constant fear of typing "go north" into your doom. The first time I played, I spent way too long staring at the opening screen, trying to figure out if "examine sword" would actually do anything (it did, thankfully).

It's all text, but somehow that makes every "You see a rusty key glinting in the torchlight" moment hit harder. No tutorials, no quest markers—just you, a handful of verbs, and the creeping suspicion that the game's idea of "puzzle logic" might involve sacrificing a sandwich to a troll. The dungeons feel massive even though they're just words on a screen, and half the fun is realizing too late that "drink potion" was a terrible idea.

If you miss when games didn't care about being user-friendly—or just want to witness the birth of RPGs in their purest, most merciless form—this is it. Just keep a notepad handy for mapping, because you will get lost.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".