How to Play
Account System
Section titled “Account System”When you first launch BashQuest, you’ll see a login screen styled after a real terminal login prompt.
Create an account:
- Choose a username (no spaces)
- Choose a password (minimum 4 characters)
- Your progress is saved to
~/.bashquest/yourusername.save
Login:
- Username and password are checked against
~/.bashquest/users.db - Three failed attempts locks you out of that session (re-run the script to try again)
- Multiple players can have accounts on the same machine
The Interface
Section titled “The Interface”Once logged in you’ll see the main menu and a persistent status bar showing:
👤 alice ⭐ Level 3 ✨ XP: 85 ❤ Lives: 3█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 3/90 levels| Element | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Level | Your current level (1–90) |
| XP | Total experience points earned |
| Lives | Remaining lives (start with 3, replenish on login) |
| Progress bar | How far through all 90 levels you are |
| 🔥 streak | Shown once you have 3+ correct answers in a row |
Meet Tasmania
Section titled “Meet Tasmania”Tasmania is BashQuest’s mentor character, Tony “Hardlygospel” Hosaroygard’s in-game handle, a legend of a sysadmin who narrates your run. Tasmania reacts to every correct answer, every wrong one, every hint you take, and celebrates streaks of 3, 5, and 8 in a row. It’s flavor, not a mechanic: nothing Tasmania says changes your score, but it’s there on every screen from your first login to the graduation ceremony at level 90.
Answering Challenges
Section titled “Answering Challenges”Each challenge shows:
- A description of the task (what to do and why)
- A fake terminal prompt for your answer
bashquest@terminal:~$ _Type your command and press Enter. The game checks whether your answer is correct using pattern matching: it accepts equivalent valid answers, not just one exact string.
Special Commands
Section titled “Special Commands”During any challenge, you can type:
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
hint |
Shows a detailed hint for the current challenge |
skip |
Skips the challenge: costs 1 life |
Lives & Game Over
Section titled “Lives & Game Over”- You start with 3 lives
- Each wrong answer costs 1 life
- Skipping a challenge costs 1 life
- Reaching 0 lives triggers Game Over: your XP is kept but lives reset to 3
XP & Scoring
Section titled “XP & Scoring”XP is awarded for each correct answer. More difficult challenges give more XP:
| Difficulty | XP |
|---|---|
| Basic | 10–15 |
| Standard | 20–25 |
| Advanced | 25–30 |
XP accumulates permanently and is used for the Leaderboard ranking.
Levels & Progression
Section titled “Levels & Progression”- Levels unlock sequentially: complete level N to unlock N+1
- Use Level Select from the main menu to replay any unlocked level
- Replaying a completed level does not reduce your saved progress level
Leaderboard
Section titled “Leaderboard”The leaderboard ranks all player accounts on the machine by total XP. Access it from the main menu: option 4.
Tiers & Milestones
Section titled “Tiers & Milestones”The 90 levels are grouped into eighteen tiers. Finish the last level of a tier and you get a milestone screen instead of the usual level-complete screen, showing your progress and a preview of what’s next. See levels for the full breakdown.
From the main menu, Level Select (option 2) now opens a topic-jump menu: pick a tier first, then a level within it, rather than scrolling one long flat list.
Achievements
Section titled “Achievements”Access Achievements from the main menu (option 5) to see your badges:
| Badge | Earned by |
|---|---|
| Purist | Never using a hint |
| No Shortcuts | Never using skip |
| Untouchable | Never losing a life |
| On a Roll | A 5-answer streak |
| Unstoppable | A 10-answer streak |
| Graduate | Completing all 90 levels |
The hint-free, skip-free, and lives-untouched badges track your whole run: they stay earned only until the moment you break them.
Graduation
Section titled “Graduation”Clear all 90 levels and you get a graduation ceremony: a certificate with your name, final XP, best streak, and badge count, plus a closing speech from Tasmania. A copy of the certificate is written to ~/.bashquest/<your-name>.certificate.txt so it’s yours to keep.
Right after that, BashQuest detects your actual OS (Arch, Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora/RHEL, openSUSE, or macOS) and prints the real package-manager command to start ricing your own desktop for real: a window manager, compositor, launcher, and bar, not the simulated one from the Desktop Ricing tier. If it can’t identify your distro, it shows the command for the three most common ones instead.