I was really skeptical when I read that Roberta and Ken Williams of the dearly departed Sierra Online were remaking Crowther and Woods’ ADVENT for modern consoles. I’d already played it; couldn’t they come out with something new? Like a new tech Quest for Glory?
I guess they probably don’t have the rights to that franchise any more. Since they sold the company. But, still. ADVENT holds such a special place in my heart for being the first computer RPG I ever played. I thought that they would cheapen it. I thought it was a quick cash grab and a way to get back in the news.
I shouldn’t have worried. If the game was special to me, it was way more special to Roberta Williams. She and her husband started an entire game company to make games like ADVENT (as did Scott Adams (not that Scott Adams), whose old adventure games are also being brought back but without such loving care).
After playing the original game and this graphical remake, I’m okay with it. This was done with love and respect. As far as I can tell, all the original text is in the 3D version, except now it is narrated by an actor with a wonderfully droll voice. The maps I made in my text run worked fine here. The game does feature optional auto-mapping. I did play with the auto mapping on, and I have to say, if it’s your first time in the game, you might not want this. It makes navigating the two mazes, as well as the caves in general, far too easy.
Running through this game, I was struck by how much it reminded me of EverQuest, one of ADVENT’s direct descendants.
It went like this: Advent sparked Infocom’s “Zork”, which inspired the first multi-user dungeon program, MUD1, which birthed a whole genre of multi user text adventures that eventually birthed “Sojourn“, that was played by a young game developer named Brad McQuaid, who then transplanted the game into the 3D realm with EverQuest. Which itself went on to birth a vast number of 3D MMORPGs, including World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, and so on.
THIS ONE GAME transformed computer RPGs. I’m just astonished that Crowther and Woods aren’t celebrated more.
Obviously, the original game is still around. You don’t have to go hunting for the source and building it from scratch. I just did that because I was weird. You can play the original text game here, just as it was played back in the 70s. I really do think this is the pure, undiluted form of the game. People found it so compelling that it started an entire genre.
But it isn’t the 1970s anymore. Colossal Cave 3D contains all that was great about the original game, plus you get to experience the world visually. Since they had to make it work in an actual simulated environment, there’s less chance of just getting loss, even without the helpful map. It’s possible to get a good sense for how things relate to one another. (Another good way: exploring the actual caves upon which the game is based).
The transition to a point and click adventure game changes some puzzles. It wasn’t clear to me how to command the bear, and that led to a death (and, for some reason, an achievement 😛 ). I couldn’t find the trident until I went looking for hints. The end game was entirely different. The change in how you acquire magic words required me to do a lot of back tracking to find one I assumed I’d gotten but did not. In the original game, you can use all the magic words from the start, if you happen to know them. In this version, you have to click on them (if they are on a wall) or hear them (if they are communicated audibly). Because I didn’t hear a bird sing in the Plover Room, I did not get the magic word.
And really, if you’re a new player, you wouldn’t even know you’d missed something.
Colossal Cave 3D took me about 2 1/2 hours to play, once I sat down to play. I’d played a little bit prior to get used to the controls and how the cave was laid out. The whole thing is up on Twitch if you’re looking to watch me get lost a million times — even with my own maps and the in-game maps.
It’s weird. I don’t think I ever played any of Scott Adams’ adventure games. I suppose I should, sometime.
Hang on… is Advent the same game as Collossal Caves then? Because I played CC on the ZX Spectrum in the early ’80s. I still have the cassette somewhere. I might take a look at the graphical version. I never finished the text one (I don’t believe I ever finished a text adventure back then although I played plenty.)
As for Scott Adams, I played one of his adventures on the basis of all the “State of the Art! Must Play! recommendations I read but I didn’t enjoy it at all, so I never played any more.
If this is the game — Colossal Cave / ZX Spectrum Text Adventure — then yes, that game looks based on ADVENT, though the map and items are a little different; I imagine it is much shorter than the original game.