QBasic was my first programming language. I wrote an "operating system" called QWIN using it when I was 7 years old. It had a fake POST with a rising tone and some atonal beeps followed by a series of unnecessary pauses and prompts before getting to a text-based shell (you read that right - QWIN had no windows) which was a pile of spaghetti driven by IFs and GOTOs with arbitrary labels. I was afraid of GOSUB and loops of all types so the embedded unlicensed Pokemon text adventure was nothing more than a series of fleshed-out decision trees until you reached the end. My screensaver that drew random lines used a static seed for the RNG so it was the same every run. Fun times.

My best good friend still has a copy of it someplace on a floppy disk because we would run it on the computer that he put together out of spare parts on a piece of plywood. Thankfully he has a family and is too busy to dig it up and send it to me so I'm spared the embarrassment that would come with seeing it.

I'm always happy to see projects like this and OHRRPGCE where people did something useful with the language.

I wanted to share a project I’ve been building for decades The Labyrinth of Time’s Edge, a massive handcrafted text adventure written in QBasic. Yes, QBasic in 2025. The game currently spans over 3,600 interconnected rooms, with unique NPCs, branching pathways, cursed villages, haunted castles, and secrets hidden across an ever-growing world. Every room is written by hand. Every description is crafted to spark the imagination. It’s built to run on the barest of systems, and it will always remain free to download and play. Why QBasic? Because simplicity has power. Modern engines demand assets, shaders, and endless pipelines. QBasic lets me focus on what text adventures do best imagination, atmosphere, and story. My philosophy is to expand outward rather than upward: instead of inflating systems, the Labyrinth grows through new areas, new lore, and new journeys, ensuring it always feels alive and endless.

QBasic was my first language even though I learned to code in like 2008, because my friends in IRC were trolling me and told me it's the best language to start with. I learned from Pete's QB Site, which is still up and an amazing resource: petesqbsite.com

I learned two things: QBasic, and don't ask good faith questions to script kiddies in the Partyvan IRC

The website lists “light requirements” for this game: 1Ghz processor, 512 MB of RAM

Not what I expect for a game written in QBasic

to the readers under about 25, qbasic was our roblox.

Super cool. Is it specific to QB64 only? I glanced over the source code and see a lot of stuff that doesn't look like it would be compatible with QBASIC / QuickBasic.

This is really awesome! Does it allow players to build their own rooms and connect to the main module? I don't know whether QBasic allow this kind of things, though. But maybe QuiakBasic can?

When I saw a zip file for a Windows application I was worried it would do that Windows thing and unzip its contents not in subdirectory. I was pleasantly surprised it did not!

Unfortunately, when I start the exe file in DOSBox Staging it only clears the screen, shows me a blinking cursor, and then does not seem to do anything beyond that.

Ahh, this brings memories - back in the day GORILLAS.BAS was a perfect game, and also a mind blowing piece of code (for a kid, ofc)!

What's a good modern QBasic environment for Mac? I may have an ancient game or 2 in that myself!