I was trying to make my first little 'game' and was wondering how do I make it so C++ reads the input of an arrow key.

I was going to run the thing in DOS and just have it so you navigate your X through a maze and it moves you by clearing and refreshing the window.

It's not DOS that you are using. You can call it either terminal or a 'doslike window' .

Answering your question. It would be fairly easy to go on using WinAPI's routines for handling key input. I'm not really sure if it's possible to handle special keys like arrows without using additional libraries.