Colossal Cave Adventure Preview: Digging Into the Wreck

ign.com:

When Colossal Cave Adventure was first circulating among computer enthusiasts in the '70s, I wasn’t even born yet. I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing the original spelunking adventure, but I’ve certainly enjoyed the fruits of its success. Colossal Cave’s legacy has spawned not just more text-based adventures like the ones legendary genre pioneer Roberta Williams was inspired to create as a part of Sierra Online, but it’s also one of the progenitors of everything we play today that remotely touches the adventure genre. Even Elden Ring might not exist without Colossal Cave.

So what does it mean to remake Colossal Cave in 2022? Text-based adventures have largely fallen by the wayside, so Roberta Williams and her husband Ken Williams are tackling the adventure most notably by visualizing it for the first time. I’ve now had the chance to play the earliest snippet of Colossal Cave Adventure at both GDC and now at Gamescom, with two hands-on previews in VR on the Meta Quest 2 and one hands-off preview on the Nintendo Switch, for which it was just announced.

The Switch version appears to be running well and offers a very enticing portable option, but of the two, the VR version is understandably the more visually impressive in the way VR is able to depict the intimidating nature of the Colossal Cave itself. Deep chasms stretch into infinity beneath my feet as I slide along a narrow rock wall; bats flap anxiously overhead. A single blue bird perches gracefully on a branch as a beam of sunlight peeks in through the cave ceiling, close enough I can almost touch him. As someone who only rarely drags out her Valve Index anymore, moments like these remind me what I love about the technology.

At first, I was a bit uncertain about