Enarian Online

Veteran MUD player, if you loved MUDs of all sorts, this is the game for you. Using MUDs of long ago as comparison, QoL improvements are: - Moving using arrow keys, or the usual n, s, e, w, etc - Aliases are in game - there are graphics for mobs, sound effects for skills - Ability to put combat text in another window in game - Buy/Sell/Compare/Wear/Remove/Dismantle and etc have UI - Items are not boring, u get a big variety of them, and also Uniques, so far i only got 1 unique wand which is useless for my Paladin Not bad for a single developer Indie game so go try it.

I am really enjoying this game. As a fan of arpgs like Diablo 2 and Path of Exile and others along with being a fan of litRPG books, this text based game just hits the spot. There is a lot more too it than you realize at first, as well. End game advancement, grouping, big numbers, putting together builds of powers and skills, there's quite a bit here. Limited lives with ability to buy more keeps you from playing outright stupid (permadeath is possible but only likely for massive idiots, like me, who kept trying to push things way too far with +6 maps too fast, but even i turned myself around and am OK!) I heartily recommend this game, particularly to play as a secondary game alongside other games.

Atrocious game. Maybe I don't understand the concept of a MUD, but this is just so poorly thought through from an UX/UI perspective that I don't know where to begin. It just feels like some random vibe coded app made by someone without any game design experience whatsoever (and if there's one thing AI sucks at it's doing good original game design) You're supposed to read the text, but then the text you're supposed to read is tiny and you're continuously spammed with irrelevant crap like "Bob's pet rabbit entering from the west". I don't care about Bob, I am trying to read the text, which I can't read because tiny. Then there's just a massive pile of clunk UI. No basic stuff like an inventory, pressing a button just parses even more crap into the text window. Oh and there are actually multiple text windows, and tons of clunk UI that is totally unintuitive. Either make a text adventure like AI dungeon with quests/stats/gear tracking UI bolted on or make a proper online RPG with a full UI like Nodiatis. This hybrid is doing nothing well and I just bounced out of this mess in minutes. Sadly I'll be refunding this as it was a fundamentally horrible experience right out of the gate.

I've never played a MUD (I didn't even know what the acronym meant before this) but I like this game. I can't offer a deeper comparison against other games in the genre so I'll leave that to others but I can tell you if you are interested in the idea of an arpg like diablo or path of exile but in a text based setting and enjoy engaging your imagination a bit it's worth taking a look. Seems like a good entry point for someone who is new to this like I am.

Needs a lot of work. Firstly, it never addresses how that you need to remember your character name and password to continue on that character every time. You'd think since it was a downloaded game, AND it wasn't addressed, it would be auto-logging you in. Do NOT skip the step to register your email as it recommends because you stand a great chance of losing your account. Also. I can not for the life of me figure out how to get the game to close other than ALTABing out and closing the game. Poor game design overall. Needs improvements. Hopefully this will all be fixed quickly.

Enarian Online is a fascinating experiment. It is a text-based MMORPG—a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon)—but it drops the slow, dense, text-heavy reading of the 1990s and completely re-envisions the genre through the lens of a fast-paced, modern Action RPG like Diablo or Path of Exile. As someone jumping into a text-based multiplayer game for the very first time, I didn't know what to expect. Would I be staring at a blank terminal typing look north for hours? Happily, no. Here is my breakdown of what it’s actually like to play Enarian Online as a total newcomer to MUDs. The Interface: A Modern Bridge to Text The biggest hurdle for any first-time MUD player is usually the visual barrier. Classic MUDs require you to read giant paragraphs of scrolling text while trying to type manual commands in milliseconds. Enarian Online completely fixes this with its custom Steam client. Instead of a raw text dump, the screen is structured with a dedicated custom UI. You get actual health and mana bars, skill buttons, floating damage numbers, a mini-map, and status effect trackers. You can play it completely with your mouse like a standard ARPG, fully via the keyboard command line like a traditional MUD, or fluidly mix both. This visual structure made the transition from modern graphic games to text incredibly smooth. It lets you focus on the environment and the action rather than struggling to parse a wall of sentences. Gameplay & Build Freedom The core loop takes place in a hub camp surrounding the Aetherian Spire, where you dive through a portal into fractured, procedurally generated realms to track down fragments of a shattered Heartstone. It feels exactly like running maps or rifts in an ARPG. While you choose from 5 starting classes (Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Necromancer, Paladin), the game doesn't lock you down: True Class Flexibility: Every single skill scroll found in the world can be learned by any class. Want to play a Mage wearing heavy plate armor while swinging a greatsword? Or a Necromancer utilizing holy Paladin generic support auras? You can. Class Synergies: Choosing a specific class simply grants massive passive bonuses (like lower resource costs or amplified damage) to your archetype's native skills, rewarding specialization while fully permitting weird, hybrid theory-crafting. The Loot & Combat Rush Combat is fast and dynamic. Abilities can be socketed into your gear: weapons automatically trigger certain attacks on cooldown when an enemy is targeted, while armor pieces house utility skills you can trigger manually or automate. The loot system is incredibly addictive. You sift through normal, magical, and rare drops, but the endgame introduces Unique items that literally generate a completely unique, randomized name upon dropping—meaning you own a piece of gear that no other player on the server will ever replicate. You can then take essences from your salvaged loot to the Temple of Imbuement to forge permanent custom behaviors and custom trigger procs directly into your gear. The Verdict for a First-Timer What Wows Instant Accessibility: The hybrid UI completely demystifies the text genre for modern gamers. Insane Theory-Crafting: The combination of cross-class skill learning, rune reforging, and the alternative advancement (AA) progression system past level 50 provides deep build complexity. Co-op Scalability: You can team up with up to 3 other players, which scales up map difficulty and switches loot to a token-gambling system. What to Keep in Mind Imagination Required: Despite the excellent UI components (health bars, maps), the actual environment descriptions, enemy actions, and visual flavors happen entirely inside your head through the text box. Learning Curve: Managing automation triggers, skill cooldown structures, and complex inventory management via text menus takes a few hours to feel like second nature. Enarian Online is a fantastic gateway drug for anyone curious about text-based gaming. It captures the exact same dopamine rush of grinding for gear and tweaking a perfect character build found in major graphic-heavy isometric RPGs, but strips away the visual clutter to prove that text can be an incredibly engaging mechanical strength. Highly recommended for RPG fans looking for something unique.

Grew up playing these in their prime and inception. Can not recommend this enough. It is everything remembered and everything we wish we would have had. It's built well and a blast. Worst case, you have fun and support a dev.

I'm in the mud and loving it!

Chill, fairly simple game. Repetitive but I don't mind. Same kind of repetition you'd get playing diablo. kill, loot, change up equipment/abilities, kill, loot. Went Drow Necro. slight regret going Drow as lifetap racial is thematically necro but necro is a mage type with a lot of shield health, so you rarely get to heal HP from the lifetap! The way I'm playing necro and the skills I've acquired, the mage class would be more appropriate. Later game might make sense to focus necro items/skills, but for now I enjoy my fire orb and ice elemental pet. FEEDBACK / REQUEST I do wish the combat log started each skill line with [Lifetap] or [FIre Orb] or [LEFT HAND (for wands etc)] before giving the rest of the flavor text. cuz it is hard as hell to scroll and read in an active combat to see what kind of damage each ability is doing. Hell maybe expand the DPS meter to show the AVG damage of the last 5 casts of each ability. That'd be dope. -----------

The complaints I see so far are ridiculously stupid. One person doesn't know how to make a new character...but it gives you a choice every time you login to the game to either make a new character or continue. Another idiot doesn't know how to close the game without alt-tabbing out of the game....try the escape button you moron. The option to close the game is right there...Jesus... The incompetency of people playing a TEXT-BASED GAME is astounding... Is the game perfect? No. It's slightly laggy at times with combat and in the central area. There is not a lot of hand holding that can guide you through how to do things (make liberal use of the "help" and "help <action>" commands). There is not a lot of content yet other than to explore randomly generated locations. Here's hoping story and gameplay will be fleshed out more over time. For now, I'm enjoying myself, and feel it deserves a recommendation for those who enjoy MUDs or GMUDs.