Why Roberta Williams Is Re-embarking on a Colossal Cave Adventure in 2022
Even after she retired from making adventure games, Sierra On-Line co-founder Roberta Williams never stopped having adventures.
After a legendary career as a pioneer of the adventure genre, creating games like King's Quest, Mystery House, Phantasmagoria, and many more, Williams has spent her retirement sailing all over the world with her husband and Sierra co-founder Ken Williams. And she's still creating, too, having just published her first novel last year - a historical fiction entitled Farewell to Tara.
"I do adventure games and I live my life as an adventure," she tells me in an interview at GDC last week. "I love adventure! I'll go and get it wherever I can get it."
Roberta Williams
But when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted lockdowns that halted many of her usual adventures, Williams needed a new project. At the time, Ken was learning Unity with the intent of making a new game of his own when Williams suddenly remembered a game that had been very, very special to her years ago: Colossal Cave Adventure.
"Without Colossal Cave, Sierra On-Line would never have existed, and I would not have my career, or Ken either," she says.
"I was so immediately drawn into it I got addicted to it, literally," Williams recalls of her first time playing the 1976 text-based adventure. "I could not stop playing it. I played it for weeks. I wanted to get every point, and this is a hard game to get all the points. And I did it, and when it was done, I wanted to play more games like this, and there weren't any. Not like Colossal Cave. I remember thinking how I was so drawn into this game to the point where I couldn't quit, I just had to keep going, and I couldn't be the only one. That's why I started with Mystery House, my first design, and I went
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