I love classic MUDs where your imagination and a keyboard is the only requirement. I think this one hits the marks at a very basic level and makes the genre more accessible to a modern audience.

I would love to see a deeper investment in the worldbuilding and dungeon mechanics. Right now it's essentially a barebones experience, but the game did just come out only 2 weeks ago as of writing so you shouldn't expect a huge amount of features.

With that being said, my suggestions for additions:

- More skill checks
- Traps
- Advanced enemy mechanics
- Nerfing rogue (you can literally permastun every enemy in the game right now)
- Persistent party members (contract system is nice, but a permanent party or companion would be even cooler with scaled rewards and difficulty)
- Longer dungeons/raids
- More variety in the procedural generation algorithm for rooms. A lot of dungeons contain too many empty rooms
- Real sense of danger from enemies pursuing you through the dungeon
- Multiple floors to each dungeon
- Way to solve the Labyrinth portal besides bruteforcing
- Tutorial explaining more advanced mechanics like the portal shards, crafting, alchemy
- Hotkey to move (atm I have to click the compass to move or type even after rebinding)
- More interesting gear. Ex: special modifiers and curses on gear
- Better implementation on market, for instance a suggested price for items that the Sim players would buy for
- A more developed overworld, perhaps a main questline or overlying goal. ATM it just is grinding levels and gear which is fine for a basic MUD but it would be nice to have something to follow outside of the grind to motivate you. Randomly generated stories perhaps?

Definitely worth it if you have a PC that can run a terminal window.

For people concerned about the AI stuff: I asked Google Gemini Pro to make an example MUD terminal emulator and the dungeon it made was called Whispering Woods. The first dungeon you find in the game is called Whispering Woods. Whether that's a coincidence or evidence of AI generating the content is up to you to decide. It doesn't bother me because the names of places doesn't really affect the experience besides thematic dressing.

This game holds immense potential and will undoubtedly appeal to fans of text-based MUD RPGs. That said, there are still numerous areas that need polishing and refinement. Crafting a high-quality text RPG is no easy feat—without visuals or background music to set the mood, immersive gameplay entirely hinges on compelling storytelling, a fully realized worldbuilding, and a deep progression system.
I’d like to offer several suggestions for the developers:
Expand character progression with craftable utility skills players can allocate points into, such as lockpicking, equipment repair, item forging, and stealth pickpocketing. The current progression framework feels far too shallow; the entire growth path is predictable at a glance, offering little incentive for long-term play.
Overhaul the equipment system entirely. Add unique exclusive affixes to high-tier gear, alongside secondary stats including critical rate, critical damage, accuracy, and attack speed. Attack speed could be visualized with an energy gauge that fills up before each strike, with gauge charge speed scaled to the Agility stat. This design moves away from flat stat stacking, adding meaningful strategy to gear loadouts and character builds. Additionally, rework skill progression: remove automatic skill unlocks tied to level, and let players manually select and upgrade skills, drawing inspiration from well-polished mainstream RPGs. While building a layered, nuanced progression system requires substantial development work, it stands as the core selling point of text games. Right now, the gameplay loop grows repetitive quickly—players merely swap higher-stat weapons and fight marginally stronger identical monsters with little variation.
Expand multiplayer social features and implement a free player-to-player gear trading system. This is not intended to encourage pay-to-win monetization; instead, it is one of the most straightforward ways to boost concurrent player counts and extend user retention.
Diversify NPC-related content: add dungeon runs where players can team up with NPC allies, and introduce varied bounty quests to cut down on monotonous pure monster-hunting tasks. Deepen NPC interaction mechanics: players can gift items to raise reputation, unlock exclusive relationship storylines, and even access side content such as romantic marriage systems.
Introduce cohesive main and side questlines. Premium story DLC could be released post-launch as additional content. Traditional MUDs rarely feature structured main plots, yet clear narrative threads drastically lower the learning curve for new players and strengthen immersion within text-only worlds.
Redesign map presentation and fast travel mechanics. A hybrid layout combining text descriptions with simple box-style grid maps would work well. While the current universal fast travel hub in the main city offers convenience, it severely undermines exploration immersion. High-level monster zones are instantly accessible from town, letting players view the full game world right at the start—this drastically diminishes motivation to explore and progress over time.
I purchased Portalborn after hearing how dedicated and responsive the developer is, even though the game’s current content library is relatively sparse. I sincerely hope the creator keeps up the great work and shapes Portalborn into a rich, vivid text RPG experience.
Love from China❤❤❤

Ykw I like this game. I bought it out of curiosity and it works for me. Something I can play and dawdle around on.
Though it makes me feel like an old man playing it, so in that regard 11/10... ...
You can build your dungeon from your own imagination through the workshop, though i havent experimented with it enough yet and the UI needs a little adjusting so i can see SOUTH and build/edit grids there... unless i missed something...
Anyways, for what it is i'd easily give this game a passing grade for anyone curious enough to go back in time to whatever eon these types of games were originally made. It was actually kind of fun for my brain.