Create your own ASCII action/adventureRPGs
Asciiquest is a development tool, that contains all that you need to just start building your top down, 2D, ASCII graphics adventures, action games, Rogue likes, or any other type of game build with ASCII and delivered in 2D. It's got its own music generator, a few different generators of random content that can be applied to any of the game's subsystems – to world building, to enemies, weapon drops, and so on. You can even use it to script events, if you want to tell a story and you can also go on and create everything by hand if that is what you want. I found Asciiquest to be great at building cool mazes, and, for a bit of originality, you can go about allowing the tools to create the basic form, and then just drop in and put your own little original spin in there. You will end up learning a lot about level design and other game ideas and toolset use, so, even if not as modern as some other game design bundles, Asciiquest has it's share of value. Plus, it's a modern game, controllable via keyboard, since it is built to run on modern OSes. So, if you have a retro ASCII project to produce, this toolset might get it done. Else, download Adventure Game Studio, and start building retro (and even more modern looking) adventure games.
