Drugwars Online is a faithful recreation of the classic Drug Wars text-based strategy game, rebuilt for the modern web. You start with $2,000 in cash, a $5,500 loan shark debt accruing 10% daily interest, and a trench coat that holds 100 units of contraband.
Your objective: buy low, sell high, and survive 30 days of drug trading across 10 global cities. Pay off your debt, dodge the police, fight off muggers, and bank your profits before time runs out.
Final Score = Cash + Bank - Debt
Drug Wars was created by John E. Dell in 1984. Originally written in BASIC for early personal computers, the game became one of the most widely distributed text-based games of the DOS era. Players traded six fictional drugs across the boroughs of New York City, dodging police and loan sharks in a race to make as much money as possible before time ran out.
The game was notable for its simplicity and addictiveness. With no graphics and purely text-based gameplay, it relied on strategic decision-making: when to buy, when to sell, when to pay off debt, and when to take risks. It spawned dozens of clones, ports, and variations across every computing platform from TI-83 calculators to Palm Pilots to early smartphones.
Drug Wars is considered a landmark in the history of indie gaming and text-based simulations. Its economic gameplay loop influenced generations of trading games that followed.
All credit for the original game concept goes to John E. Dell.
Drugwars.online was built by Tuxxin, a developer and creator of the TiCore PHP Framework and iNetPanel hosting platform.
This project started as a nostalgic tribute to the original Drug Wars — a game that many of us played endlessly on old computers and calculators. The goal was to recreate the full experience with a retro CRT terminal aesthetic while making it accessible on any modern device, with no downloads or installs required.
The site is built on the TiCore PHP Framework, a lightweight MVC framework designed for fast, secure web applications. The entire game runs server-side with no JavaScript game logic — every action is a real HTTP request, just like the text-based games of the original era.
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