Colossal Cave Adventure was one of the first ever computer games, released way back in 1975 as a text adventure game. It’s considered the grandfather of adventure games, and perhaps video gaming in general. Over four decades later, and we have a release date for the official remake.
Colossal Cave is launching on January 19, 2023 on PC and Mac (Steam and Epic Games Store), as well as Switch, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Meta Quest 2.
The remake is designed by veteran gaming couple Ken and Roberta Williams, co-founders of Sierra On-Line, one of the biggest game companies of the 1980s and 90s. They had since retired from active game development, until now. Colossal Cave represents their first project in nearly 20 years.
The website’s FAQ has a nice explanation as to why they return to tackle this classic text adventure:
Roberta and Ken originally had no interest in starting another company. They were just looking for something fun to build and Roberta had the idea of paying homage to the game that inspired their company and changed their lives, Colossal Cave Adventure.
As they have gotten deeper into developing the game, they now understand why it became such a success. The original game is certainly an adventure game, but also has action elements, humor, engaging characters, is scary in places, has a point system, and is incredibly challenging. It’s a far better game than they first realized! There is far more to it than they would ever have believed when they started.
As an added bonus, anyone can play the original text adventure, embedded directly into your browser. Neat!
