Colossal Cave Reviews

In 1978 I played a text version of this game, without points. I remembered the bird and snake. I remembered dwarfs trying to kill me. I remember loosing a pearl that rolled down a hill. Finally I remembered a shadowy figure who waved at me. I never finished the game. I always wanted to meet the shadow character and see what he wanted. NOW I have almost finished the game. It is fun. Yes old fashion. It is both for young and old. It is simple but not so simple, okay sometimes strange challanges. Game is worth playing. Game is BIG but not overly so. I do definately recommend it, however it is a bit pricy, best therefore to buy on sale.

I didn't grow up playing any of the variants of Adventure, but I *did* catch Zork and the text parser era of graphical adventures, in particular several of the King's Quests, so when Roberta showed back up with a remake of CCA talking about what an inspiration it was, I had to see where it all began out of historical curiosity. And for a game from 1977, with no prior art to build on, it really is remarkable. Rough in some respects—I don't know what purpose the exits with RNG outcomes serve beyond annoying the player, never mind the ever-present threat of RNG death that makes "save early, save often" more essential than usual with early adventure games—and the puzzle design won't stymie a seasoned adventurer, but there's a few of those "aha!" moments to be had, and the real brainteaser is figuring out the routing required to maximize your score. The caves are vast and thoroughly interconnected, and there's just enough friction to make a clean sweep tricky. The caves are also just plain weird, in that charming, adventure game-y sort of way I won't spoil here. Anyone who's played the earlier KQs will recognize the hodgepodge of design sensibilities at work here. Aside from some quibbles—I really don't need the narrator to automatically read the name of an inventory item every single time I mouse over it, please—the remake itself is quite nice. It won't be the *same* experience as a proper text adventure by any means, but the audiovisual presentation sells the atmosphere and the simple point and click interface suits a game with such simple commands just fine.