Colossal Cave Adventure
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''Colossal Cave Adventure'' (also known as ''Adventure'' or ''ADVENT'') is a
text-based adventure game '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...
, released in 1976 by developer
Will Crowther William Crowther (born 1936) is an American computer programmer, caver, and rock climber. He is the co-creator of ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' from 1975 onward, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of video game design and ins ...
for the
PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
. It was expanded upon in 1977 by
Don Woods Donald Woods (1933–2001) was a South African journalist and activist. Donald or Don Woods may also refer to: * Donald Woods (actor) (1906–1998), Canadian-born American film and television actor * Donald Devereux Woods (1912–1964), British m ...
. In the game, the player explores a cave system rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The game is composed of dozens of locations, and the player moves between these locations and interacts with objects in them by typing one- or two-word commands which are interpreted by the game's natural language input system. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It is the first well-known example of interactive fiction, as well as the first well-known
adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...
, for which it was also the
namesake A namesake is a person, geographic location, or other entity bearing the name of another. History The word is first attested around 1635, and probably comes from the phrase "for one's name's sake", which originates in English Bible translations ...
. The original game, written in 1975 and 1976, was based on Crowther's maps and experiences
caving Caving – also known as spelunking in the United States and Canada and potholing in the United Kingdom and Ireland – is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems (as distinguished from show caves). In contrast, speleology i ...
in
Mammoth Cave Mammoth Cave National Park is an American national park in west-central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the even-longer system under F ...
in Kentucky, the longest cave system in the world; further, it was intended, in part, to be accessible to non-technical players, such as his two daughters. Woods' version expanded the game in size and increased the number of
fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
elements present in it, such as a dragon and magic spells. Both versions, typically played over
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...
s connected to mainframe computers, were spread around the nascent
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
, the precursor to the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, which Crowther was involved in developing. ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' was one of the first
teletype games An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common ...
and was massively popular in the computer community of the late 1970s, with numerous
ports A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...
and modified versions being created based on Woods' source code. It directly inspired the creation of numerous games, including ''
Zork ''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded a ...
'' (1977), '' Adventureland'' (1978), ''
Mystery House ''Mystery House'' is an adventure game released by On-Line Systems in 1980. It was designed, written and illustrated by Roberta Williams, and programmed by Ken Williams for the Apple II. ''Mystery House'' is the first graphical adventure ga ...
'' (1980), '' Rogue'' (1980), and ''
Adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...
'' (1980), which went on to be the foundations of the interactive fiction, adventure,
roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player characte ...
, and
action-adventure The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a storyli ...
genres. It also influenced the creation of the
MUD A MUD (; originally multi-user dungeon, with later variants multi-user dimension and multi-user domain) is a Multiplayer video game, multiplayer Time-keeping systems in games#Real-time, real-time virtual world, usually Text-based game, text-bas ...
and
computer role-playing game A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...
genres. It has been noted as one of the most influential video games, and in 2019 was inducted into the
World Video Game Hall of Fame The World Video Game Hall of Fame is an international hall of fame that opened on June 4, 2015. It is located in The National Museum of Play's ''eGameRevolution'' exhibit; the hall's administration is overseen by The Strong and the Internationa ...
by
The Strong The Strong is an interactive, collections-based educational institution in Rochester, New York, United States, devoted to the study and exploration of play. It carries out this mission through six programmatic arms called "Play Partners": * Nat ...
and the
International Center for the History of Electronic Games The International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games, and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and conn ...
.


Gameplay

''Colossal Cave Adventure'' is a
text-based adventure game '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...
wherein the player explores a mysterious cave that is rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The player must explore the cave system and solve puzzles by using items that they find to obtain the treasures and leave the cave. The player types in one- or two-word commands to move their
character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
through the cave system, interact with objects in the cave, pick up items to put into their inventory, and perform other actions. The allowable commands are contextual to the location, or room, the player is in; for example, "get lamp" only has an effect if there is a lamp present. There are dozens of rooms, each of which has a name such as "Debris Room" and a description, and may contain objects or obstacles. The program acts as a narrator, describing to the player their location in the cave and the results of certain actions. If it does not understand the player's commands, it asks for the player to retype their actions. The program's replies are typically in a humorous, conversational tone, much as a Dungeon Master would use in leading players in a
tabletop role-playing game A tabletop role-playing game (typically abbreviated as TRPG or TTRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a form of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech. Participa ...
. The original 1976 version of the game contains five treasures which can be collected. Although it is based on a real cave system, it contains a few fantasy elements such as a crystal bridge, magic words, and axe-wielding dwarves. The player can die by falling into a pit or being killed by the dwarves, but otherwise the game has no ending or goal beyond finding the treasures. The 1977 version of the game, upon which later versions were based, adds ten more treasures and more fantasy elements. It also adds a points system, whereby completing certain goals earns a predetermined number of points. The ultimate goal is to earn the maximum number of points—350, in the 1977 version—which involves finding all the treasures in the game and safely leaving the cave.


Development


Crowther's original version

''Colossal Cave Adventure'' was originally created by William Crowther in 1975 and 1976. Crowther and his ex-wife
Patricia Patricia is a female given name of Latin origin. Derived from the Latin word ''patrician'', meaning "noble"; it is the feminine form of the masculine given name Patrick. The name Patricia was the second most common female name in the United State ...
were both programmers and
cavers Caving – also known as spelunking in the United States and Canada and potholing in the United Kingdom and Ireland – is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems (as distinguished from show caves). In contrast, speleology is ...
and had extensively explored
Mammoth Cave Mammoth Cave National Park is an American national park in west-central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the even-longer system under F ...
in
Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...
, the longest cave system in the world, in the early 1970s as part of the
Cave Research Foundation The Cave Research Foundation (CRF) is an American private, non-profit group dedicated to the exploration, research, and conservation of caves. The group arose in the early 1950s from the exploration efforts at Floyd Collins Crystal Cave, now with ...
. In 1972, Patricia led the expedition that found a connection between Mammoth Cave and the larger Flint Ridge Cave System. In addition to caving, the pair produced
vector Vector most often refers to: *Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction *Vector (epidemiology), an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematic ...
map surveys of the cave: they transcribed the survey data of the cave from "muddy little books" into a
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...
terminal in their house, which could send and print messages from programs running on the central computer and was connected to a
PDP-1 The PDP-1 (''Programmed Data Processor-1'') is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at Massachusetts ...
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
at
Bolt, Beranek and Newman Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown ...
(BBN) where William Crowther worked. This data was then fed into a program developed by the pair that generated plotting commands onto
punched tape Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program loop Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage ...
, which were then fed into a
Honeywell 316 The Honeywell 316 was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by Honeywell starting in 1969. It is part of the Series 16, which includes the Models 116 (1965, discrete), 316 (1969), 416 (1966), 516 (1966) and DDP-716 (1969). They were commonly used f ...
minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...
attached to a Calcomp drum plotter at BBN to print paper maps. These maps were some of the earliest computer-drawn maps of caves. In 1975, after he and Patricia divorced, William Crowther stopped caving with the Cave Research Foundation. Driven by what he later described as an increase in spare time combined with missing his two daughters, he began working on a text-based game in Fortran on BBN's
PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...
mainframe, interfacing through a teletype printer, that they could play. He combined his memories and maps of the Mammoth Cave system, particularly a 1975 map of the Bedquilt area of the caves, including Colossal Cavern, with elements of the ''
Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical Studies Rules ...
'' campaigns that he played with friends to design a game around exploring a cave for treasure. Crowther wanted the game to be accessible and not intimidating to non-technical players such as his children, and so developed a natural language input system to control the game so that it would be "a thing that gave you the illusion anyway that you'd typed in English commands and it did what you said". Crowther later commented that this approach allowed the game to appeal to both non-programmers and programmers alike, as in the latter case, it gave programmers a challenge of how to make "an obstinate system" perform in a manner they wanted it to. This approach was also developed to allow the game to be played on a teletype printer, rather than rely on user interface elements used in programs designed for monitors. The initial version of the game was about 700 lines of code, plus another 700 lines of data such as descriptions for 66 rooms, navigational messages, 193 vocabulary words, and miscellaneous messages. Once the game was complete, in early 1976, Crowther showed it off to his co-workers at BBN for feedback, and then considered his work on the game finished, leaving the compiled game on the mainframe before taking a month off for vacation. According to one of Crowther's then-coworkers in 2007, "once it was working, Will wasn't very interested in perfecting or expanding it." Crowther's work at BBN was in developing
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
, one of the first networks of computers and a precursor to the Internet, and the PDP-10 mainframe was part of that network. During his vacation, others found the game and it was distributed widely across the network to computers at other companies and universities, which surprised Crowther on his return. The game did not have an explicit title in it, simply stating "WELCOME TO ADVENTURE!!" as a part of the opening message and having a file name of ADVENT; it was referred to as both ''Adventure'' and ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', with the latter becoming the more common name over time. Most
computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...
s at the time did not have
monitors Monitor or monitor may refer to: Places * Monitor, Alberta * Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States * Monitor, Kentucky * Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States * Monitor, Washington * Monitor, Logan County, West Vir ...
, and players would instead play the game over teleprinters connected to the mainframe.


Woods' modifications

One person who discovered the game was
Don Woods Donald Woods (1933–2001) was a South African journalist and activist. Donald or Don Woods may also refer to: * Donald Woods (actor) (1906–1998), Canadian-born American film and television actor * Donald Devereux Woods (1912–1964), British m ...
, a graduate student at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. Woods found the game on a PDP-10 at the Stanford Medical School and wanted to expand upon the game. He contacted Crowther to gain access to the source code by emailing "crowther" at every domain that existed on the ARPANET. Woods built upon Crowther's code, introducing more
high fantasy High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot.Brian Stableford, ''The A to Z of Fantasy Literature'', (p. 198), Scarecrow Press, Pl ...
-related elements such as a dragon. He changed the puzzles, adding new elements and complexities, and added new puzzles and features such as a pirate that roams the map and steals treasure from the player or objects that could exist in multiple states. 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. According to cavers who have played the game, much of Crowther's original version matches the Bedquilt section of Mammoth Cave with some passages removed for gameplay purposes, though Woods' additions do not as he had never been there. According to William Mann, a caving compatriot of Crowther who played both versions when they were developed, Crowther was focused on creating the cave system as a setting for a game, while Woods was interested in making a game and not in replicating the feeling of caving. Woods' version, released in 1977, expanded Crowther's game to approximately 3,000 lines of code and 1,800 lines of data, growing to 140 map locations, 293 vocabulary words, and 53 objects. Woods also added access controls to the game, allowing mainframe administrators to restrict the game from running during business hours. Woods began working on the game in March 1977; by May his version was complete enough to release, and was soon attracting attention around the United States. Woods continued releasing updated editions in Fortran until 1995. Crowther later said that Woods' bringing fantasy elements earlier into the gameplay was an improvement to his version, though Crowther's daughters also recall him telling them when they were frustrated at puzzles in the game that it was one of Woods' additions, not his. Crowther did not distribute the source code to his version to anyone else, and it was later believed to be lost until it was rediscovered on an archive of Woods' student account at the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...
in 2005. Woods, however, distributed the code to his version alongside the compiled executable. Woods' 1977 version became the more recognizable and widespread version of ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', in part due to its wider code availability, as it led to several other variants of the game being produced.


Later versions

Both Crowther's and Woods' version were designed to run on the PDP-10 and used features unique to that
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
, meaning that the program could not be easily moved to other systems, even those that could run Fortran programs. One of the first efforts to
port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ham ...
the code to other languages or systems was by
RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...
researcher James Gillogly in 1977. Gillogly, with agreement from Crowther and Woods, spent several weeks porting the code to the
C programming language ''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well as ...
to run on the more generic
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
architecture. It can still be found as part of the
BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...
Operating Systems distributions, or as part of the "bsdgames" package under most
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
distributions, under the command name "adventure". Bob Supnik of
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...
also ported the game in Fortran to the
PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...
minicomputer in mid-1977, spreading it to other minicomputer systems. Afterwards, numerous other ports were made of the game to different languages and systems, sometimes identified by the number of points available in the game. There were enough ports and variants and alternate takes of the game by 1982 that an article in '' Your Computer'' described the entire set of games wherein the player enters short commands to move between set locations as "''Adventure'' games", and provided code for the
ZX81 The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-cos ...
computer for an "Adventure-writing kit" program that could be used to generate a game with that gameplay. In 2017,
Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar''. He wrote a guidebook for the ...
created a port for modern computers of Woods' 1995 version of the game as ''Open Adventure'' and released the source code under an
open-source license An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial compa ...
with permission from Crowther and Woods. Commercial versions of the game were also released.
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
published a version titled ''
Microsoft Adventure ''Microsoft Adventure'' is a 1979 interactive fiction game from Microsoft, based on the PDP-10 mainframe game ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', and released for the TRS-80, Apple II, and later for the IBM PC. It was programmed for the company by G ...
'' in 1979 for the
Apple II Plus The Apple II Plus (stylized as Apple ] or apple plus) is the second model of the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. It was sold from June 1979 to December 1982. Approximately 380,000 II Pluses were sold during its ...
and
TRS-80 The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...
computers, and again in 1981 for
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
as a launch title for
IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
s, one of the few software programs and the only game at launch.
The Software Toolworks The Software Toolworks (commonly abbreviated as Toolworks) was an American software and video game developer based in Novato, California. The company was founded by Walt Bilofsky in 1980 out of his Sherman Oaks, California, Sherman Oaks garage, ...
released ''The Original Adventure'' for IBM PCs in 1981; endorsed by Crowther and Woods in exchange for a nominal payment, it was the only version for which they received any money.
Level 9 Computing Level 9 was a British developer of computer software, active between 1981 and 1991. Founded by Mike, Nicholas and Pete Austin, the company produced software for the BBC Micro, Nascom, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Oric, Atari, Lynx 48k, RML 380Z, ...
released multiple versions of the game for different computer platforms under the name '' Colossal Adventure'', beginning with a version in 1982 for the
Nascom The Nascom 1 and 2 were single-board computer kits issued in the United Kingdom in 1977 and 1979, respectively, based on the Zilog Z80 and including a keyboard and video interface, a serial port that could be used to store data on a tape cassette ...
that includes an entire extra section where the player saves elves from flooding caves, as well as later versions that include pictures of the areas. In 2022,
Ken Ken or KEN may refer to: Entertainment * ''Ken'' (album), a 2017 album by Canadian indie rock band Destroyer. * ''Ken'' (film), 1964 Japanese film. * ''Ken'' (magazine), a large-format political magazine. * Ken Masters, a main character in ...
and
Roberta Williams Roberta Lynn Williams (; born February 16, 1953) is an American video game designer and writer, who co-founded Sierra On-Line with her husband, game developer Ken Williams. In 1980, her first game, ''Mystery House'', became a modest commerci ...
, co-founders of
Sierra Entertainment Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, ...
, announced that their new company Cygnus Entertainment was making a 3D version of the game, under the title ''Colossal Cave 3D Adventure''. It is planned for release on January 19, 2023, for
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, and
Nintendo Switch The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...
, and will support the
Oculus Quest 2 Meta Quest 2 (initially sold as Oculus Quest 2) is a virtual reality (VR) headset developed by Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.). It was unveiled on September 16, 2020 and released on October 13. As with its predecessor, the Oculus Qu ...
virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...
headset. The game was started as a hobby project by the pair during the
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
pandemic, and is intended by designer Roberta to be a recreation of how playing the game felt like to her in 1979.


Legacy


Video games

''Colossal Cave Adventure'' is considered one of the most influential video games. In 2019, it was inducted into the
World Video Game Hall of Fame The World Video Game Hall of Fame is an international hall of fame that opened on June 4, 2015. It is located in The National Museum of Play's ''eGameRevolution'' exhibit; the hall's administration is overseen by The Strong and the Internationa ...
by
The Strong The Strong is an interactive, collections-based educational institution in Rochester, New York, United States, devoted to the study and exploration of play. It carries out this mission through six programmatic arms called "Play Partners": * Nat ...
and the
International Center for the History of Electronic Games The International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games, and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and conn ...
. The game is the first well-known example of
interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...
and established conventions that have since become standard in interactive fiction titles, such as the use of shortened cardinal directions for commands like "e" for "east", as well as inspiring the contents of the fiction titles themselves. The game is the
namesake A namesake is a person, geographic location, or other entity bearing the name of another. History The word is first attested around 1635, and probably comes from the phrase "for one's name's sake", which originates in English Bible translations ...
and the first well-known example of an
adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...
, as it combined the interactivity of computer programs with the storytelling of literature or
role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...
s such as ''Dungeons & Dragons'', despite its lack of linear plot. The only text adventure game known to precede it is '' Wander'' from 1974, which did not have the spread or influence of ''Adventure''. ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' was immensely popular among the small computer-using population of the time. Historian Alexander Smith described it as "ubiquitous" on computer networks by the end of 1977, alongside ''
Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
'' and '' Lunar Lander''. Computer game programmers of the time were greatly inspired by the game; according to game designer and creator of the
Inform Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released betw ...
interactive fiction language
Graham Nelson Graham A. Nelson (born 1968) is a British mathematician, poet, and the creator of the Inform design system for creating interactive fiction (IF) games. He has authored several IF games, including ''Curses'' (1993) and '' Jigsaw'' (1995). Educat ...
, "for the five years to 1982 almost every game created was another 'Advent'". Several of these games were the initial releases of companies that would go on to become key innovators for the early adventure game genre. These included ''
Zork ''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded a ...
'' (1977)—which began development within a month of the release of Woods' version—by the team of
Dave Lebling Peter David Lebling (born October 30, 1949) is an interactive fiction game designer ( implementor) and programmer who has worked at various companies, including Infocom and Avid. Life and career He was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Mary ...
,
Marc Blank Marc Blank is an American game developer and software engineer. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first commercially successful text adventure computer games, ''Zork''. Career Blank first encountered Don Woods and Will ...
, Tim Anderson, and
Bruce Daniels Bruce Daniels is an American hydroclimatologist, business executive and computer programmer. He is known in Silicon Valley as one of the pioneers of the personal computer and user-friendly interfaces. Daniels earned his Ph.D. from the Universi ...
at
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
and eventually forming
Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. ...
; '' Adventureland'' (1978) by
Scott Adams Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the syndicated '' Dilbert'' comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. ''Dilbert'' gained natio ...
of
Adventure International Adventure International was an American video game publishing company that existed from 1979 until 1986. It was started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a ...
; and ''
Mystery House ''Mystery House'' is an adventure game released by On-Line Systems in 1980. It was designed, written and illustrated by Roberta Williams, and programmed by Ken Williams for the Apple II. ''Mystery House'' is the first graphical adventure ga ...
'' (1980) by Roberta and Ken Williams of On-Line Systems. The 1980
Atari 2600 The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...
video game ''
Adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...
'' was an attempt to create a graphical version of ''Colossal Cave Adventure'', and itself became the first known example of an
action-adventure game The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a story ...
and introduced the fantasy genre to video game consoles. ''
Carmen Sandiego ''Carmen Sandiego'' (sometimes referred to as ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?'') is a media franchise based on a series of computer games created by the American software company Broderbund. While the original 1985 '' Where in the World ...
'', an early
educational game Educational games are games explicitly designed with educational purposes, or which have incidental or secondary educational value. All types of games may be used in an educational environment, however educational games are games that are design ...
series begun in 1985, was inspired by transforming the idea of moving around the caverns of ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' looking for treasure into moving around the globe searching for clues. In addition to inspiring adventure games, as described by Matt Barton in ''Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games'', ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' demonstrated the "creation of a virtual world and the means to explore it", and the inclusion of monsters and simplified combat. For this, it is considered a precursor of
computer role-playing game A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...
s, though it was lacking several elements of the genre. Glenn Wichman and Michael Toy name the game as an influence for their game '' Rogue'' in 1980, which went on to become the namesake of the
roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player characte ...
genre. ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' also inspired the development of online multiplayer games like
MUD A MUD (; originally multi-user dungeon, with later variants multi-user dimension and multi-user domain) is a Multiplayer video game, multiplayer Time-keeping systems in games#Real-time, real-time virtual world, usually Text-based game, text-bas ...
s, the precursors of the modern-day
massively multiplayer online role-playing game A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...
.


Other media

Two phrases from the game have gone on to have a lasting impact in programming and video games. " Xyzzy" is a magic word that teleports the player between two locations ("inside building" and the "debris room"). It was added by Crowther at a request by his sister when play-testing the game to skip the early section of the game. As an in-joke tribute to ''Adventure'', many later games and computer programs include a hidden "xyzzy" command, the results of which range from the humorous to the straightforward. Crowther stated that for its purpose in the game, "magic words should look queer, and yet somehow be pronounceable", leading him to select "xyzzy". Additionally, in the game there is a maze created by Crowther where each of ten room descriptions was exactly the same: "YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." The layout of this "all alike" maze was fixed, so the player would have to figure out how to map the maze. The phrase "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" has become memorialized and popularized in the
hacker culture The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy—often in collective effort—the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of software systems or electronic hardware (mostly digital electronics), to a ...
, where "passages" may be replaced with a different word, as the situation warrants. This phrase came to signify a situation when whatever action is taken does not change the result. ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' has continued to be referenced by media for decades since. The 2003 book on the history of interactive fiction ''Twisty Little Passages'' was named after the "all alike" maze, and the 2010 documentary on the history of text adventure games '' Get Lamp'' is named for the command to get one of the first objects the player encounters and must carry to solve the game. The 2013 game '' Kentucky Route Zero''s third act draws direct inspiration from the game, showing a computer simulation set up inside of a cave, which is itself depicting a massive cave system. The game is also a key plot point in an episode of the 2014 TV series '' Halt and Catch Fire'', a period drama taking place in the early days of the personal computing revolution. In it, the chief software designer uses the game as a competency test to determine which programmers will remain on the team. As a tie-in, a fully playable version of the game augmented with player hints and artwork revealed when certain locations are visited was made available on the show's official website.


References


Sources

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External links

{{Commons category, Colossal Cave Adventure *
Colossal Cave Adventure
' at th
Interactive Fiction Database
with downloadable versions for many platforms *
Colossal Cave Adventure
' at th
Interactive Fiction Wiki
with downloadable versions for many platforms
Original source code
for Crowther's 1976 version
''Open Adventure'' source code
of a port of the 1995 Crowther and Woods version 1970s interactive fiction 1976 video games Adventure games Atari ST games Caving mass media Commercial video games with freely available source code CP/M games Fantasy video games Linux games Mainframe games Public-domain software with source code Video games developed in the United States World Video Game Hall of Fame Single-player video games