The Large Gold Nugget, playable in the Hall of Mists, cannot be carried up the Cobble Crawl which leads to the Well House. Some Treasures have flavor text and effects. There are a limited number of Treasure cards in the deck, and since every Treasure card, as with all Items, must be played in specific map locations, there’s no point to charging blindly into the cave until you know where you want to go. Early in the game players will benefit from accumulating cards. As a third action, players must choose whether to pick another card, play a card or move again. Next, a player may choose to move into an adjoining location on the map. On every turn, players first pick a card. The number of players determines the number of treasures required to win. The goal of the game is to return to the Well House with treasures found in the Cave. Players start at the Well House above the cave entrance. Game mechanics are straightforward and the brief instructions well organized. Where items can be played corresponds to where you would have found them in the old computer versions. Once played, items are considered to be “carried.” This is an important distinction, as card effects will differentiate between items carried or inventoried. Prior to playing items you merely have them in your inventory. The dynamic that ties the board game back to the computer game is that every Item card lists the specific location where it can be played. Players take one or two cards every turn, but they must also delve into the Colossal Cave to activate their items, accumulate treasure and win the game. Similar to Magic: The Gathering or Munchkin, where cards are grouped by ability or function, Colossal Cave cards come in 4 varieties: Actions, Reactions, Treasure Items and Non-Treasure Items. Funded through Kickstarter, O’Dwyer’s rendition smartly uses card abilities with a scaled-down map to capture the spirit of the original computer game. Appealing to the imagination, Platt added colorful detail to his environments, like his description of the cyclops, “Dressed in a three-piece suit of worsted-wool…” This special creative character is why Colossal Cave has withstood the test of time, at least for those of us old enough to remember that primeval era of computer gaming.įor everyone else, Colossal Cave has now been converted into a board game by Arthur O’Dwyer. According to Wikipedia, Dave Platt’s 1984 expansion – often referred to as “ADV550” or the “550-point version” for the total number of possible victory points – is perhaps the most famous. Crowther was a caver, and the game map leverages that knowledge and experience, incorporating terminology like “Bedquilt” and “Y2.” He created secret words – “XYZZY,” “PLUGH” and “PLOVER” – with different in-game effects depending on location, including a “Maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” In 1977, Don Woods, a Stanford grad student, collaborated with Crowther, enhancing the game using Tolkien-inspired fantasy elements.Īs the game’s audience expanded, so did its universe, each subsequent iteration increasing the number of map locations, puzzles and treasure combinations. Will Crowther created Colossal Cave in 1976 as a way to reach out to his estranged children. Among the very first of these text-based adventures was Colossal Cave. At the dawn of interactive gaming existed dozens of such early and limited universes, with dense labrynths and complicated puzzles. The universe consisted of brief textual descriptions delivered 64 KB at a time. Then I look into the past, toward lowly foothills at the farther reaches of my memory when I played games with no graphical elements whatsoever. It is the threshold when no more tangible or infinite virtual environment is desired, and within which each individual has the potential to be nothing short of a god. Some of us may live to see it happen – a universe as real as any other, created through the coordinated genius of man and machine. On the horizon, merely three or four peaks ahead, awaits the Mount Everest of this metaphor: The Matrix. From the present perspective, summiting yet another peak among the vast range of ever-more fantastic achievements in the digital age, I stop and survey the landscape.
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