How I Play Games in the Terminal

The other day I was bored and started wondering what games in the terminal were like. The idea of playing directly in the terminal sounds pretty fun — you’d expect lightweight mini-games that are surprisingly addictive.

Here are a few I found.

Installing Emacs

The first step is to install Emacs. It’s easy (though not so easy to learn how to use).

On macOS, just run the following command in your terminal:

brew install emacs

If it doesn’t work, that’s what Google is for 😅 It’s not my goal here to teach you how to install it.

Games I Found

Some are pretty cool, others not so much, but here’s my little curated list.

Tetris

emacs -q --no-splash -f tetris

Ping Pong

emacs -q --no-splash -f pong

Controls: Right player: ↑ and ↓ arrow keys Left player: 4 and 6 keys (or ← and → arrow keys)

Snake

emacs -q --no-splash -f snake

Solitaire

emacs -q --no-splash -f solitaire

Doctor

emacs -q --no-splash -f doctor

Life

emacs -q --no-splash -f life

Dunnet (text-based adventure game)

emacs -q --no-splash -f dunnet

If you get stuck in the game (like I did 😅), just press:

Control + Z