Mudlet

Among the first digital games that saw the light of day, before any popular titles, were text-based adventure and role-playing games. They had absolutely no graphics, so you could only read descriptions and use your imagination. Also, any interactions with the game had to be done through command lines, in a natural language. Today, you can play online variations of such games, which are known as MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon). For this, you would need a MUD client and an excellent choice is Mudlet. It gives you the possibility of connecting to MUDs instantly and it places many useful features at your disposal.

The software is available for all major platforms and it can be installed in just a few seconds. It doesn't have any special requirements and its impact on a computer's performance is insignificant.

The application's user interface is mostly blank when you run it, but you can bring up various tools, on separate windows, by clicking their corresponding options, located on a toolbar. Mudlet comes with a series of default profiles, for certain MUDs, but you can add new ones yourself and remove existing ones if you want to. All you have to do is click the appropriate options and type the name of the MUD you want to add or remove.

Although there are exceptions, MUDs are usually text-based, which is why they will look the same when you connect to them. When you connect to a MUD for the first time, you will have to create a new character, which involves a series of user specifications, like character name, password and various character attributes. When you connect to the same MUD in the future, you only have to type in your character's name and password. The best part is that you can specify a default name and password on the MUD selection window, so you don't have to type in the same credentials each time you wish to connect to a certain MUD.

Thanks to Mudlet's powerful scripting engines, connections to MUDs can be established almost instantly. Furthermore, everything works quite fast, so you won't notice any delays between command inputs and results. Besides its enhanced scripting engine, the software provides other useful tools, for configuring triggers, aliases, timers and keys, for compiling your own scripts, debugging and much more.

A particularly useful feature, which is definitely worth mentioning, is Mudlet's mapping function. In text-based games, navigation is done via commands like "go south" or go "west" and more often than not, players would draw a map on a piece of paper so they wouldn't get lost. With Mudlet, you only need to click a button, located on a toolbar, to bring up a rough map of visited areas. You can zoom in and out, rotate the map and even make it 3D. What's more, you may click an area on the map to navigate there without typing anything.