I rebuilt Usurper (1993 BBS door game) from scratch in C# - 100-floor dungeon, NPC simulation, online multiplayer, and you can still play it on a real BBS

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4336570/Usurper_Reborn/

Anyone here remember Usurper by Jakob Dangarden? It was a BBS door game from 1993 -- a text-based RPG where you explored a dungeon, fought monsters, dealt with town NPCs, and competed with other players who called into the same board. I spent way too many hours on it as a kid and decided to rebuild it from scratch.

Usurper Reborn keeps the spirit of the original -- text-based, turn-based combat, persistent world with other players -- but expands everything. 11 classes (up from the original set), 10 races, a 100-floor dungeon across 8 themes, 7 endgame boss fights, 5 recruitable companions, NPC permadeath, a faction system, player housing, a settlement that grows based on NPC behavior, guilds, and New Game+ with prestige classes.

The BBS part is real. This isn't just nostalgia bait. It runs as an actual BBS door game with DOOR32.SYS and DOOR.SYS drop file support. Sysops can install it on their boards right now. It's running on several BBSes already. CP437 encoding, compact menus for 80x24 terminals, the whole deal.

It also runs as an online multiplayer server over SSH, which is basically the modern version of dialing into a BBS. Group dungeon crawling, guilds, world bosses, live chat. Or play solo offline.

You can try it right now without installing anything:

ssh usurper@play.usurper-reborn.net -p 4000 (password: play)

Free and open source, GPL v2. Also on Steam if you want automatic updates and a bundled terminal.