Ken and Roberta Williams (Ken Williams, Roberta Williams) stood at the origins of quests and, for example, founded the legendary company Sierra. The couple is still interested in development and announced a remake Colossal Cave Adventure – a game that is considered one of the most influential in history.
Colossal Cave Adventure was born between 1975 and 1976 and is called the first adventure video game. It was built entirely on the text, relied on the plot and offered to manually write commands for the character. The game greatly inspired the programmers of its time, thanks to which there appeared, say, Zork (another influential interactive book), Rogue (the origin of the roguelike genre) and Mystery House (the first quest with graphics, which was created just by the Williams).
Colossal Cave Adventure launched at the VT100 terminal.
Now the Williamses want to reproduce the classics in a modern wrapper: they create Colossal Cave 3D Adventure with 3D graphics based on Unity. The basic concept is as simple as the original: players explore a cave, look for treasure, and encounter characters including a troll, a bear, a snake, and a pirate. The goal is to find all the treasures.
Among the features of the remake are many mysteries, a believable 3D world, over 143 locations and VR support. At first, the authors treated virtual reality as something simple, but then they realized – with a number of important edits Colossal Cave 3D Adventure becomes an excellent VR game. Therefore, for the sake of good support for virtual reality, a lot of effort has been invested.
First image from Colossal Cave 3D Adventure.
According to the Williamses, they started the remake out of boredom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ken wrote a book about the old days Sierra, was surprised by her success and plunged into memories even deeper. He began to take an active interest in how modern video games are created and began to program in Unity for fun.
As an exercise, Roberta suggested recreating Colossal Cave Adventureand the couple suddenly realized that this was an excellent idea: the game stands out from the rest of the modern market, but at the same time it offers a number of exciting elements – interspersed with action, humor, quests, a scoring system, interesting characters and a large world to explore.
The Williamses have already assembled a team and opened a studio Cygnus Entertainment. They fund the company themselves.
Release Colossal Cave 3D Adventure scheduled for this summer. Platforms – PC (including Mac) and Quest 2 helmet. Other devices are being considered but not yet confirmed.
PC, VR