I want to create a game that's a mix of dnd style text adventure, and bullet hell.  Unity isn't good for text adventures, and raw javascript is hard to make games for.  What should I use?

Try C++. The Visual Studio free(Community) edition has some good console text programming templates.

Can it do rich text?  I don't really find terminal text very appealing.

You can always apply words text templates?

Mate, it is standardized to not contain Fixedys and Consolas anymore, which are still in the newest Windows Prompt.

What do you personally call rich text? It has all types of fonts but mostly the basic font is kinda cool while text colors can be quite easily modified.

Also the background color can be changed as well.

Background can change at any time, but you have to first clear console text/buffer.

Love2D, Game Maker, Mono Game

5 hours ago, Pepsidog said:

and raw javascript is hard to make games for.  What should I use?

Yes, JavaScript is hard for games. I study and use TypeScript. TS is very similar to C#. It has the "interface" keyword like C# and so on. TS created by Anders Hejlsberg. Anders is author of C#, Delphi and Turbo Pascal. For beginning you can use Playground for writing code and publish you examples. I wrote "Hello, World" example special for you: run it by one click in your OS. Create your classes. I have shown how to write text to the "index.html" page from the code. Program.ts/Main() is entry point of your game. You need to sign up using your GitHub account. Click the "Fork" button on Plunker, write something, click the "Save" button and give a link to me. Web apps will be available on all platforms. It is a nice place to start. Trust me.

Playground: https://next.plnkr.co/edit/dVbFhLz55YJqHfK9?preview

Output:
 

My game will be here.
It is awesome!

Program.ts

import { MyGame } from "./MyGame";

class Program
{
    public static Main(): void
    {
        let myGame = new MyGame();
    }
}

// Debug Version
Program.Main();

// Release Version
// window.onload = () => Program.Main();

MyGame.ts

export class MyGame
{
    private _outputElement: HTMLDivElement;

    public constructor()
    {
        // Create an div element for text output
        this._outputElement = document.createElement("div");
        // Add the output element on the page
        document.body.appendChild(this._outputElement);
        // Print a text
        this._outputElement.innerHTML = "My game will be here.";
        // A new line
        this._outputElement.innerHTML += "<br>";
        // Add a new text
        this._outputElement.innerHTML += "It is awesome!";
    }
}

4 hours ago, Pepsidog said:

Can it do rich text?  I don't really find terminal text very appealing.

HTML/CSS allows you to get rich text more easily. If you will use Visual Studio you will not be able to build your apps for Mac and Linux. You need to install Qt for build your apps for Android and iOS. But you need to have Mac and Linux to build your apps for them. Many of people use Mac and Linux now. But if you will use HTML/CSS/TypeScript (as I have shown above) you will create cross platform web applications for easily. Everyone will be able to run your apps by one click without installation. You will write code ones and deploy it ones. Yes, C++ is very speed but I think it is overkill for your games. Maybe I wrong but It is my opinion that HTML/CSS/TypeScript are better for your games.

Quote

What engine for a game?

If you want to use 2D engine to write text, images, sprite, animations and so on you can use Pixi.js. I wrote the instruction how to build your game to debug and release versions locally using TypeScript: https://github.com/8Observer8/getting-started-with-pixijs-and-typescript

You can run Pixi.js example written in TypeScript on Playground: https://next.plnkr.co/edit/2dkQtKRY30nvoYmF?preview

There are good suggestions here. I'll add that I tried Phaser the HTML5 game engine for a bit, it's pretty easy to get into.

Here is a youtube playlist of good tutorials for it.

Making a bullet hell in it should be fairly easy. Doing the text part of it, I don't think will be that difficult either.