What is VIM Adventures?

VIM Adventures is an online game based on VIM's keyboard shortcuts (commands, motions and operators). It's the "Zelda meets text editing" game. It's a puzzle game for practicing and memorizing VIM commands (good old VI is also covered, of course). It's an easy way to learn VIM without a steep learning curve.

You play a blinking cursor appearing one day in a semi text based world of Textland inhabited by little people but ruled by bugs. You soon discover that your arrival was foretold by an old prophecy and that you're expected to restore order to the world (in case you didn't make it to level 2 yet...).

How to play

You start the game with only the ability to move up, down, left, and right. As you progress, you talk to people and collect items and keyboard buttons. Each keyboard button adds to the set of commands you can give the cursor, until you master VIM.

You can also perform operations such as login, load and save game and others using the in-game menu at the bottom of the screen. For a complete list of commands you can type in the command line mode, please type ':help :' (without the quotes).

These instructions are all you need to know. Hints scattered throughout the game help you and ease the learning process. You can't advance to the next level until you master a skill!

Getting help

The little people of Textland have a lot of helpful tips to share so make sure you talk with each and every one by bumping into them.

In addition, every time you pick up a keyboard key, an explanation of what the key does and how it should be used is displayed. This window can be closed using ESC (as any other window in this game) and you can walk through the example using the '+' and '-' keys. You can get help on additional keys using the syntax ':help {char}' by replacing {char} with the character or word you would like to get help on. You can also type a topic such as 'registers' or 'text-objects' to get help on that topic. See below for a full list of possible arguments for the :help command.

If you don't remember which keys you collected so far, or need to refresh your memory a little, you can click on the keyboard icon in the in-game menu, or type ':keyboard' to see a keyboard with your current available keys highlighted. Clicking or pressing on a key will show a short description of its function.

Stuck in the game and don't know how to proceed? Can't find that key or complete a text? Check out the VIM Adventures facebook page or send us a question to

Topics for :help command

The following characters, commands and topics can be used after the :help command:

h j k l : w W e E b B x X r d dd D ~ 0 ^ $ f F t T ; , % z zt zz zb g gg G 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 count [count] * # n N p P " y yy Y registers :reg "" "- "_ "0 "1 "2 "3 "4 "5 "6 "7 "8 "9 "a "b "c ... "x "y "z "A "B "C ... "X "Y "Z i I a A c cc C s S o O word WORD sentence paragraph { } ( ) [{ ]} [( ]) . text-objects aw iw aW iW as is ap ip a[ a] i[ i] a( a) i( i) a< a> aB iB ab ib i< i> at it a{ a} i{ i} a" i" a' i' a` i` H M L nu nonu nu! nonu! | / ? ` ' m :marks :delm :delmarks :delm! :delmarks! undo u :undo CTRL-R :redo redo rnu nornu rnu! nornu! + - @ @@ q macro

Enjoy all of VIM Adventures!

Continue learning VIM commands and motions on the quest to save Textland.
Buy a license now for immediate access to all levels and be on your way to VIM mastery!

What players say

• Vim Adventures has been immensely helpful in getting me comfortable with all the commands and motions.
• Your game is simply amazing, that's the best and fastest way to learn how to use Vim. Not only, it's very funny.
• Vim adventures is awesome, currently the only thing I use to learn vim. Keep up the good work :)

Shortcuts, commands and motions taught

It's going to be a lot of fun!

Copyright & Credits

User Statistics

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Replay any level you've already unlocked by typing :level <level-number> (e.g. :level 6).

Show in-game statistics by typing ':set stats', and hide them by typing ':set nostats'.

Press Esc to return to the game