We now find ourselves in 1977 in the year of game offerings. Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as the 39th President of the United States in this year and Fleetwood Mac released their Rumors album which went on to sell 40 million copies to date. I have just spent the last several months playing Moria, an immense dungeon crawler, and was ready for something completely different. There are a handful of games in 1977 that fit my “quest” criteria and I found myself drawn to Adventure also known as Colossal Cave. The Colossal Cave Adventure has the distinction of being hailed as the first ever text adventure.
When I was younger I was heavily drawn to text adventures. The descriptions within the text body helped to feed my young imagination. It is my personal opinion that a glaring weakness in these early dungeon crawlers is one of atmosphere. There are no room descriptions of any kind nor any kind of central story or personalities to interact with. You are wandering around a 3-D maze, slaying monsters, and collecting treasures in an effort to increase your own abilities and buy even more powerful armor and weapons. Wizardry, which came along later, changed this somewhat by including brief text descriptions scattered throughout the dungeon complex. The pursuit of these brief text descriptions was the “carrot on the stick” for me. When I was introduced to the text adventure I marveled at the opportunity to read about your surroundings and interact with those surroundings with a parser rather than a sword.
A good text adventure was like reading a good book and Boy Howdy do I like to read. My favorite text adventures were those created by Infocom because of their writing prowess and because you never seemed to have issues with syntax or vocabulary in any of their offerings. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for text adventures. The gaming consoles that exist today; with the ability to graphically show you a room in great detail; has helped to drive text adventures into extinction. I hope that I live a good ripe old age because I look forward to rediscovering these text adventures as I time travel through the years with these games.
The original version of Adventure was developed by programmer Will Crowther. Crowther and his wife Patricia were experienced cavers, having previously helped to create vector map surveys of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky in the early 1970s for the Cave Research Foundation. In addition, Crowther enjoyed playing the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with a regular group which included Eric S. Roberts and Dave Lebling, one of the future founders of Infocom (quite the connection there).
One of those that had discovered the game was Don Woods, a graduate student at Stanford University in 1976. Woods wanted to expand upon the game and contacted Crowther to gain access to the source code. Woods built upon Crowther’s code in FORTRAN, including more high fantasy-related elements based on his love of the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. He also introduced a scoring system within the game and added ten more treasures to collect in addition to the five in Crowther’s original version.
Colossal Cave Adventure is considered one of video gaming’s most influential titles. Dave Lebling said that when it arrived at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, “For a couple of weeks, dozens of people were playing the game and feeding each other clues … Everyone was asking you in the hallway if you had gotten past the snake yet.” The game is generally the first known example of interactive fiction and established conventions that are standard in interactive fiction titles today, such as the use of shortened cardinal directions for commands like “e” for “east”. Colossal Cave Adventure directly inspired the creation of the adventure game genre. Games such as Adventureland by Scott Adams of Adventure International, Zork by the team of Lebling, Marc Blank, Tim Anderson, Bruce Daniels, and Albert Vezza of Infocom, and Mystery House by Roberta and Ken Williams of Sierra Entertainment were all directly influenced by Colossal Cave Adventure, and these companies would go on to become key innovators for the early adventure game genre.
Over the years Adventure has been rewritten and expanded upon by many different individuals. This led me to quite a dilemma as there were many different versions of the game available to play. I ended up choosing the Colossal Cave Adventure 350 ( the Don Woods version ) as it was more complete. The 350 represents the scoring system and the number of total points that you can earn while playing the game.
Colossal Cave Adventure has the player’s character exploring a mysterious cave rumored to be filled with treasure and gold.
There are 15 different treasures that you need to collect as you explore this mysterious cavern complex:
- a gold nugget
- jewelry
- coins
- silver bars
- diamonds
- a treasure chest
- a Persian rug
- Ming Vase
- emerald
- pyramid
- pearl
- gold chain
- spices
- golden eggs
- trident
You receive points for a multitude of things:
- exploring new areas of the caves
- certain actions taken within the caves
- discovering and taking treasures
- receiving more points for those treasures when they are safely deposited in the building
You can lose points in some of these Colossal Cave Adventure iterations for choosing to save a game and/or quit and some even offer a hint which can cause a reduction of points.
I greatly enjoyed my experience with Colossal Cave Adventure. I found the difficulty level to be easy to moderate with the exception of a couple of the game’s puzzles. The game ran extremely smooth; seemed sophisticated for it’s time; and I encountered no bugs or flaws with the version I played.
I did discover all of the games treasures and reached the end and my final score was 280 of a possible 350 which placed my ranking at Junior Master; just 17 points shy of reaching Master 2nd Class.
I received point deductions for allowing for save game states and received I believe 2 to 5 points off for each save with this particular version of the game. I also didn’t perform some of the standard actions needed to acquire a couple of the treasures. For example there is more than one way to obtain the diamonds. I know I lost points because I gave the silver bars to the avaricious troll rather than the golden eggs. I could have began anew to try and achieve a higher score or even a perfect score but I was content to get through the game and acquire all of the treasures.
I felt that all of the puzzles were logical and fair except for 2 or 3 of them. The hardest puzzle in the game involves the Plover Room and I actually had to take a hint in order to work my way through that one. I only was able to obtain the singing bird in the game because I carefully read the instructions. The solution was so obtuse I am not sure I would have discovered it on my own. The dragon took me a considerable amount of time to deal with and the solution was so ridiculous I found myself rather annoyed with it rather than feeling any sense of elation.
I read through a walk through to discover why I might have been “docked” points and it was only then I discovered I should have given the troll the golden eggs and not the silver bars. I received points for discovering the silver bars but not extra points for storing them in the building. The golden egg solution however is another puzzle solution that is so obtuse that I am not sure I would have discovered it at all. The Plover Room puzzle is the hardest in the game however. I might have spent several weeks with it and still not have figured it out were it not for the hint I received.
The mapping of the cave complex I found to be rather difficult. It did not follow any logical orientation and instead was up and down all around. Many are going to find the mapping of the locations in this game rather difficult as the map makes no logical sense. I chose not to take a picture of my own map for the reasons below.
You’ll notice that in my review of the game dear reader that I do not literally walk you through each puzzle as I know many tend to do. I would rather not provide spoilers or solutions for you and instead it is my sincere hope that my write up encourages you to try this incredible piece of gaming history. I want to share my experience with you and give you my thoughts on the game but I do so to share my joy of the experience and hope that you share your own with me as well or become encouraged to try the game on your own. If you do decide to play the game; I do hope you’ll come back and share your own experience with me.
If I had a rating system I would give Colossal Cave Adventure a high rating. It was smooth, polished, sophisticated, a heavy influence on the genre, most of the puzzles were fair and logical and I enjoyed my time with the game. I spent roughly five hours with the game and I really enjoyed immersing myself in a text adventure after grueling months spent mapping out the dungeons of Moria. If anyone is interested in the history of gaming and its influences I would strongly recommend trying Colossal Cave Adventure for a great reto-gaming experience.
Does anyone else have a fondness for text adventures? Which text adventure is your favorite? Do you agree with my decision to leave out spoilers now and in the future? I look forward to hearing from you.