Locations that previously existed only in snatches of text, amplified in my imagination and embellished by decades of unreliable memory, are now rendered in 3D. It’s weird because it’s both incredibly different, thanks to the overhauled visual presentation, and yet it is also faithful to the source material, to an almost alarming degree. For me, playing it is a deeply weird experience. It’s a reimagining of Colossal Cave, with first-person real-time 3D graphics and VR support. Yet we’re reunited in a way as her new game, her first in 25 years, is released. I would eventually graduate from primary school. She would make millions as a renowned game designer. To this day, I have a deep nostalgic attachment to the instant hot chocolate drink Dad would fetch for us from the office vending machine.ĭespite this formative connection through Cave, in the years that followed, Roberta Williams and I would go our separate ways. While he sat at his desk typing important Dad things into his computer, we’d be sat in the next room, logged into spare workstations running Colossal Cave.Īs we typed ‘go north’ or ‘get bird’ into the primitive yet seemingly magical text parser, my sister and I would read aloud the descriptions of each new chamber of the cave, updating each other on our progress and brainstorming solutions to whatever shared obstacle had us stymied. In the very early 1980s, my sister and I would tag along with Dad to his office on the occasions when he’d work on weekends. As she tells it, when she eventually finished the game and wanted more, she decided to write her own.Ĭave was the first computer game I remember playing. She became obsessed, taking copious notes of each situation the game described, and drew maps as she tried to figure out how the intricate cave network actually fit together. They played it at home via a monitor-less terminal networked to Ken’s work computer they’d type commands and wait for the attached printer to spit out a response. It was Williams’ husband Ken, with whom she’d later found Sierra On-Line, who first introduced her to Cave. Colossal Cave Adventure running on a PDP-11/34 displayed on the VT100 console. Lurid green text on a black screen transported players to a mysterious underground world inhabited by pirates and dwarves, where mazelike passages confounded geography, and untold riches awaited the intrepid adventurer. Read: Roberta and Ken Williams are preserving adventure game historyĬolossal Cave Adventure (also known variously as Colossal Cave, or just Cave, or sometimes even Adventure) was a text adventure written by Will Crowther in 1976 and embellished by Don Woods a year later. In fact, Williams is looking back beyond her own career, to the 1970s, to remake the game that inspired her to make her own games all those years ago. Her first game since 1998 is, in some ways, a deliberate effort to return to where it all began. 25 years later, after dabbling in consultancy, writing a novel, taking up sailing, and establishing a scholarship for women in game design, Williams has returned to game development.
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