Occasionally these changes clash with the gameplay. (No doubt to fit thematically with the vending machine found within.) The different-maze isn't caves at all, but a set of steel-walled bunkers. Similarly, the Hall of the Mountain King is a crumbling subterranean palace rather than a natural cavern enlivened by a fanciful nickname. It's disconcerting to come across a sturdy ladder leading up or down, when I know perfectly well that Crowther's vision was squirmy limestone chimneys. I'm somewhat ambivalent about these changes. (These "scenery" dwarves always flee your presence without interacting.) You can spot dwarves mining gold nuggets and sparkling diamonds - or reading a magazine - in the appropriate spots. Large stretches are reimagined as a dwarvish mine. They've tried to make the caverns into a more consistent environment. The original text is preserved, but the creators haven't hesitated to add more detail. You are in an awkward sloping east-west canyon. Old-fashioned mouse-and-screen games are as just immersive for me as headsets, so I don't bother.) As I've written before, VR doesn't do a lot for me. (I didn't play in VR, in case you were wondering. But then the tunnels open into larger spaces, with dark abysses above or below, and you really start to feel like an explorer in a vast and mysterious space. The areas near the surface are cramped ("a low crawl.") and littered with tourist trash. Once you get underground, ironically, the environment feels more expansive. The "lost in a forest" experience is reduced to a single clearing. As a result, the outdoor environments are seriously shrunk down. The budget for environmental detail is rather tight - no doubt to play on consumer-level VR sets. It is nice! Look at that flowstone! But it's not a 2020s-era visual wonderland, or even mid-2010s. This is, well, I'd call it "nice for an indie Unity game". So let's talk about the graphics instead. You can read the text if you want to follow along. It's like one of those Shakespeare adaptations that exactly follows the original text while transplanting the story to 90s California. It even replicates the verbose/brief experience! If you click again in the opening location right away, it just says "You're at the end of the road again." The aim is clearly to include all the original text from Colossal Cave, as narration over a graphical environment. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully." Click anywhere, and the game says: "You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. (It says "Keep watch on your compass" instead of referring to parser commands like NORTH and SOUTH.)Īnd then you are in a nicely-rendered forest by a small building. It goes on to recite the rest of the original game's HELP text, only slightly updated for the graphical UI. And if you want to play the original - not exactly the Fortran version, but close - click here.)Ĭolossal Cave 2023 introduces itself by saying, in a reassuring British baritone: "Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave, where others have found fortunes in treasure and gold." Sends a wisp of mist down your spine, doesn't it? If you're curious about the earliest history of Adventure / Colossal Cave, Dennis Jerz's 2007 article is definitive. That's the ancestor of nearly every other version. (By the way, when I say "the original" I mean the 350-point Fortran Adventure by Crowther and Woods. (Warning: I assume you've long since played or at least read about the original game. Now it's out, and I can say: this is a tight, nay, a pedantic adaptation of the original game. Roberta and Ken Williams are making a VR Colossal Cave, March 23, 2022 But I'd say that the best answers are going to point to a free adaptation of the game. I hope Roberta and Ken have had fun thinking about them. These are interesting questions! You can have fun thinking about them. In a graphical environment, how do we render the confusing exits of Witt's End? How do we show that your inventory matters in the Tight Squeeze? Can you really not move around in the dark? A year ago, Ken and Roberta Williams boothed at GDC with a demo of their coming-out-of-retirement project: Colossal Cave in 3d.
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