Early Interactive Fiction Part 3: The First Interactive Fiction Game

Posted by Roz Foster

Categories: Games, Interaction Design & Usability, Interactive Experience Design

Early Interactive Fiction Part 3: The First Interactive Fiction Game: Colossal Cave Adventure

colossalcaveadvent

Fig 1. ADVENT, later Colossal Cave Adventure, being played on an Osborne mini-computer around 1982 - http://bit.ly/4hl0Xp

The very first interactive fiction game was called Advent or Adventure, and later was widely known as Colossal Cave Adventure.  The game was written in 1975 by Will Crowther, a cave diver and programmer, who wanted to enjoy it with his two young daughters.  (The game is based on a cave that Crowther knew well, Bedquilt Cave in Kentucky.  Apparently, there’s a cave called Colossal Cave nearby; however, the details of the game are based on Bedquilt.)

Colossal Cave Adventure (entirely text-based) quickly spread across ARPAnet in 1977 and galvanized the first generation of video game designers.  It inspired Infocom’s text-based Zork along with Atari’s graphical version, Adventure.  It was only after playing an errant copy of ADVENT (found on developer Ken Williams’s work computer) that Roberta Williams was stirred to write and draw Mystery House.  (The game development duo would later create the popular King’s Quest series.)

Although it was text-based, Colossal Cave Adventure was the catalyzing spark behind a new creative genre: graphical adventure games. (See Wikipedia on Colossal Cave Adventure.)

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it on your favorite social sites, leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Post a Comment