Games - Adventure

Classic Computer Games: Adventure

dventure, by Will Crowther and Don Woods, is the character-mode computer game par excellence. The passion for Adventure is described in detail in Tracy Kidder's classic The Soul of a New Machine. The objects of the game were to explore Colossal Cave, picking up useful or costly objects, to fend off attackers, and to escape with your life, Reincarnation was available on a limited basis. Here is what it looked like:

$ advent

Welcome to adventure!! Would you like instructions?

n

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.

Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and

down a gully.

e

You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring.

There are some keys on the ground here.

There is a shiny brass lamp nearby.

There is food here.

There is a bottle of water here.

take lamp

OK

take keys

OK

w

You're at end of road again.

s

You are in a valley in the forest beside a stream tumbling along a

rocky bed.

s

At your feet all the water of the stream splashes into a 2-inch slit

in the rock. Downstream the streambed is bare rock.

s

You are in a 20-foot depression floored with bare dirt. Set into the

dirt is a strong steel grate mounted in concrete. A dry streambed

leads into the depression.

The grate is locked.

open grate

The grate is now unlocked.

in

You are in a small chamber beneath a 3x3 steel grate to the surface.

A low crawl over cobbles leads inward to the west.

The grate is open.

w

You are crawling over cobbles in a low passage. There is a dim light

at the east end of the passage.

There is a small wicker cage discarded nearby.

take cage

OK

w

It is now pitch dark. If you proceed you will likely fall into a pit.

quit

Do you really want to quit now?

yes

OK



You scored 32 out of a possible 350 using 13 turns.



You are obviously a rank amateur. Better luck next time.

To achieve the next higher rating, you need 4 more points.

$

During the 1980s, programmers young and old, filled countless spare hours lost in the Colossal Cave. Some of us wrote scripts to play the first hundred moves or so automatically. This did not always work, because the knife-throwing dwarfs appeared at unpredictable intervals. Of course, if you knew how to get to the source code, you could figure out the ending too, but that would have been cheating. In computer operations sessions, trainers used games like this to familiarize new systems librarians with the notion that computers would only do exactly what you told them.

A major rite of passage involved escaping from a maze of twisty little passages all alike, which swiftly became a maze of twisty little passages all different, and a twisty maze of little passages, and a little twisty maze.... Adventure is full of campy humor. For instance: "You are in a large barren room. A sign says, 'Caution: Bear In Room'", or my favourite, the "Troll Bridge", with its sign: "Stop: Pay Troll".