
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.Ĭolossal Cave Adventure is considered one of video gaming’s most influential titles.
#COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE GAME 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. Woods wanted to expand upon the game and contacted Crowther to gain access to the source code. One of those that had discovered the game was Don Woods, a graduate student at Stanford University in 1976. Roberts and Dave Lebling, one of the future founders of Infocom (quite the connection there).

In addition, Crowther enjoyed playing the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with a regular group which included Eric S. 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. The original version of Adventure was developed by programmer Will Crowther.

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 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’ll always have a special place in my heart for text adventures.

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. 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.Ī good text adventure was like reading a good book and Boy Howdy do I like to read. The pursuit of these brief text descriptions was the “carrot on the stick” for me. Wizardry, which came along later, changed this somewhat by including brief text descriptions scattered throughout the dungeon complex. 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. There are no room descriptions of any kind nor any kind of central story or personalities to interact with.

It is my personal opinion that a glaring weakness in these early dungeon crawlers is one of atmosphere. The descriptions within the text body helped to feed my young imagination. When I was younger I was heavily drawn to text adventures. The Colossal Cave Adventure has the distinction of being hailed as the first ever text adventure. 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. I have just spent the last several months playing Moria, an immense dungeon crawler, and was ready for something completely different.
#COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE GAME MAC#
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. We now find ourselves in 1977 in the year of game offerings.
