'PromptQuest' is the worst game of 2025. You play it when trying to make chatbots work

Opinion When Microsoft recently decided to open source the seminal text adventure game Zork, I contemplated revisiting it during the festive season... until I realized I've spent much of 2025 experiencing the worst of such games when using AI chatbots.

Adventure games like Zork and its many imitators invited players to explore a virtual world, often a Tolkien-esque cave, that existed only as words.

"You enter a dark room. A Goblin pulls a rusty knife from its belt and prepares to attack!" was a typical moment in such games. Players, usually armed with imagined medieval weapons, might respond "Hit Goblin" in the expectation that phrase would see them draw a sword to smite the monster.

But the game might respond to "Hit Goblin" by informing players "You punch the Goblin."

The Goblin would dodge the punch and stab the player with the rusty knife.

Game over... until the player ...