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Terminally old-school native gaming!
Pengling Apr 26, 2022
I've never set up a personal Linux box without installing the BSD Games package (bsdgames - full list of contents here), so some of my native gaming is done with ancient terminal-based stuff, especially if I only have a few spare minutes. (I used to install open-invaders as well, but I feel that better options exist for Space Invaders-style experiences.)

A couple of my favourites are;

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snake - The player (represented by the "I") must collect money ("$"), whilst avoiding being eaten by the snake ("Ssssss" - the capital "S" is its head). The snake gets more aggressive the more money the player collects, and the only defensive option is being able to press the "W" key to spend money to warp to a random spot that's hopefully away from the snake. The snake will give a cheeky smile and sometimes a wink when it eats you, lending the game some personality. There is a multi-user high-score table, accessible using the command snscore.

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boggle - A digital version of the classic dice-and-paper game. This prompted me to purchase the physical game for group gatherings and it's a riot, but for solo play I find the computerised version more convenient.

I also find hangman to be alright for killing small amounts of time, but there's not much point in taking a screenshot of that - it looks exactly as you'd expect it to.

Hopefully I'm not the only one still playing these oldies-but-goodies! Are there any other terminal-based games out there that still play well today? There's such a vast expanse of Linux software that I'm sure that I've missed a bunch!
Chuckaluphagus Apr 26, 2022
I never knew that snake was not what I think of as a "traditional" snake game! I ignored it all this time. Just gave it a shot now. I may need to occupy/frustrate my children with this one.

The only terminal game I play with any regularity is Nethack, which I return to every year or so. I am fond of "fortune", which isn't a game, but which often makes me chuckle. The database of possible fortunes to install is so enormous that I can't recall ever seeing it repeat.

I grew up with an MS-DOS command line. Playing terminal games wasn't a thing for me back then, but running applications certainly was. When the first Raspberry Pi computer came out 10 years ago, using a graphical interface was pokey, but I discovered a lot of good software that could be run without it. A standout for me is Cmus (https://cmus.github.io/), which is a fantastic music library manager/player that will run on a potato.
Pengling Apr 27, 2022
Quoting: ChuckaluphagusI never knew that snake was not what I think of as a "traditional" snake game! I ignored it all this time. Just gave it a shot now. I may need to occupy/frustrate my children with this one.
That was what surprised me when I first discovered it! The high-score table makes it great on shared PCs.

The traditional eating game is instead known as worm in BSD Games - though this version is less traditional in that the worm eats numbers and grows by the amount of the number that it ate.

Quoting: ChuckaluphagusI am fond of "fortune", which isn't a game, but which often makes me chuckle. The database of possible fortunes to install is so enormous that I can't recall ever seeing it repeat.
Haha, yes! I love fortune too - I can't resist running it whenever I have a terminal open, and I often use screensavers that use output from it (currently using a brilliant one that emulates an Apple II). It's cool that it's easy to create custom fortune-files, too.

Last edited by Pengling on 27 April 2022 at 7:01 am UTC
kokoko3k Apr 27, 2022
bastet:
"For people who enjoy swearing at their computer, Bastet (short for Bastard Tetris) is an attractive alternative to Microsoft Word."
https://github.com/fph/bastet/

Quoting: Pengling
Quoting: ChuckaluphagusI am fond of "fortune", which isn't a game, but which often makes me chuckle. The database of possible fortunes to install is so enormous that I can't recall ever seeing it repeat.
Haha, yes! I love fortune too - I can't resist running it whenever I have a terminal open, and I often use screensavers that use output from it (currently using a brilliant one that emulates an Apple II). It's cool that it's easy to create custom fortune-files, too.

Right in the .bashrc :)
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Last edited by kokoko3k on 27 April 2022 at 1:48 pm UTC
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