There is a fantastic auto-map feature you can choose to use or ignore if you are too hardcore. Puzzles are surprisingly logical like using a bird cage to collect a bluebird only to use that bird later to scare off a snake. Wander the land clicking on anything with the eyeball icon to get more info and the hand icon to use or take something. After two or three passes you might be ready to take your notes and maps and go for that perfect 350 score, but make sure you have plotted the best path through the game, as your lantern only has half its life when going for this prize.Īs far as the game itself, Colossal Cave has you exploring a unique fantasy world that blends magic, treasure, dwarves and dragons. Perfecting the game will require lots of memorization and prep work and the ability to avoid accepting help of any kind including tutorials and mid-game hints, which all cost points. By design, the game is meant to played multiple times, especially if you are going for the coveted 350 max award. Everything from the simplistic yet still charming graphics, awkward interface, and a point reward system that modern adventure games have moved past are on full display here. Having not played Colossal Cave ever, I had no such preconceptions to overcome, so I was happy to let Roberta’s imagination do the talking for this adventure.įor anyone younger than 40 prepare to be shocked, or at least startled a bit by the ironman-style design and gameplay rules that hearken back to a time when most people weren’t playing games or if they were maybe only a few each year. The original Colossal Cave created by Will Crowther and Don Woods back in 1975 probably has more in common with Zork, which also received a graphical reimagining in the mid-90s, but as I learned back then, it’s pretty hard to beat your imagination. Interestingly enough, Colossal Cave triggered numerous flashbacks to both Zork and those early days at Sierra. I was a huge fan of Sierra games ever since I played the original 1987 Leisure Suit Larry – the EGA one with text parser – and a big step up from my first game ever, which was Zork, a text-only game I played on the TRS-80 setup in my local Radio Shack. Full disclosure going into this review I am a former employee of Sierra Online starting back in 1989, and I know Ken and Roberta personally.
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