Just wondering what your views were on text based indie games, u know the small type with minimal graphics, like the trading simulation games and stuff.

Dope Wars, Chart Wars, at a push even the old Championship manager games (though they're not exactly indie)

I personally love these kinda of games and the gameplay is much better than some fully 3d games in my opinion, and they're fun little time wasters.

They're the only kind I've ever really tried programming too.

Dont get me wrong though, If I could release the next competitor to mass effect or COD and become a multi-millionairre then of course I would, but I just enjoy programming little text based simulation games so much.

Depends on how fun the game is. I think Dwarf Fortress is splendid. I think tic-tac-toe is boring. I think MUDs with more complex simulations than just

> kill dragon

can be more engaging than a lot of current MMOs, but I'm tired of Diku derivatives.

Basically, if you have a good game, you have a good game. That should shine through the format you choose to present it in, though it can be hard to see that shine if it's not very polished. Anything past that is just the subjective nature of what we consider a good game to be.

Text based is fine. Just not 'text mode' based. Make a simple graphical GUI layer for it.