Graham Nelson once said that a text adventure is a "novel at war with a crossword puzzle". In some works, the novel wins, and in some the crossword wins. This is a list of games where both of them are trounced by the NES.
In other words, these are games that I enjoyed that are decidedly games, rather than stories, but which don't mainly rely on "puzzles" in the standard IF sense. These games are typically much shorter, and more replayable, than a standard puzzle-y work like "Curses!". (Pure ascii abuse, like a port of space invaders, is also not quite what I mean)
(This is incomplete, obviously. I'll probably keep expanding this, but I wanted to keep these in one place.)
1. Textfire Golf by Adam Cadre (2001) Average member rating: (24 ratings)
Ivanr says:
A classic. The mechanics here make impressive use of real-time text to simulate the kind of golf simulator you would find in an arcade, but Cadre also gives the game charms all its own.
A highly replayable optimization game, where you run from room to room in a ship that slowly fills with water, trying to rescue the most valuable objects before they're swallowed up. At the end you get a score, describing the process of selling off the rescued objects and how much you got from them. Surprisingly deep, and especially well-suited to tooling around with in odd hours.
3. Lock & Key by Adam Cadre (2002) Average member rating: (75 ratings)
Ivanr says:
Another highly-replayable game. You are installing traps to stop an imprisoned adventurer - a reverse cave-crawl, sort of. Watch as your best-layed plans, well, you know. Funny and fun.
4. The Art of Fugue by Victor Gijsbers, Jimmy Maher, Dorte Lassen, and Johan (2010) Average member rating: (6 ratings)
Ivanr says:
You control four characters, moving at a chronological offset from each other. A puzzle game, but not in a particularly standard sense. Has kind of an arcade-y feel.
5. Kerkerkruip by Victor Gijsbers (2011) Average member rating: (69 ratings)
Ivanr says:
I haven't really played much of this one, but it's hard to imagine leaving it off of a list like this. A fully implemented roguelike.
