After roughly 47 years, Colossal Cave has returned to the gaming world. This time, it has a shiny new look thanks to the wonderful work of Cygnus Entertainment with Roberta and Ken Williams at the helm. For those who are unaware of the significance of Colossal Cave, allow me to provide a bit of history.

Originally released in 1976 by Will Crowther for the PDP-10 computer, Colossal Cave Adventure was a text-based adventure game where you control a character who goes into a cave system to hunt down various treasures that are rumored to exist within. What you find proves to be much more than treasure as all sorts of creatures attempt to block your path. The only way to get all of the treasure and make it out alive is by using your own ingenuity and perhaps a bit of insanity.

While the old game was simply a text-based adventure game, this new one features a fully 3-D environment based on the original game that allows you to experience the game like never before. In fact, they have gone so above and beyond with this remake that they made a version of the game that can be played in VR so you can truly be immersed in one of the first video game adventures.

While the developers provided me with a booklet that gave the general rundown of what you are supposed to do, I decided to go into it blind. Despite being a bit lost from time to time, I quickly figured things out to the point where I was having a wonderful time with this game. For those who want to know what you are supposed to do, read the next paragraph. For those who don’t, scroll by as quickly as possible.

Your overall objective in the game is to find all 15 treasures that are hidden throughout the cave system and bring them back to the Wellhouse. This is to be done while achieving a perfect score of 350. The main way that you can achieve this is by carrying around key items, such as the lamp and keys, while also not reading any instructions or taking any hints. Doing any of those two things, along with dying, will cause you to lose points and allow you to not achieve that coveted 350 point score. Another key hint, don’t eat the food or drink the water. They aren’t for you.

Let’s look into the controls of the game. The game gives you two different control schemes to pick from, Mouse & Keyboard and Mouse Only. Mouse & Keyboard is the control scheme that should be used in order to have the most control over your character and would be the controls that I recommend in order to have the most enjoyable experience.

However, the Mouse Only option certainly has its own appeal, considering that it is designed for those who love point-and-click games. I do not play a whole lot of point-and-click games, so I decided to not pick that option since it is something that I am not used to, and wouldn’t be able to give a proper review of that control scheme.

Overall, I believe that Colossal Cave is a brilliant love letter to the beginning of gaming. It beautifully captures what the original adventure was like while being able to provide a new look to the game that invites players from multiple generations to enjoy this lovely adventure.

While there are certainly those who will probably prefer to play the original game as it allows them to fully use their own imagination in creating the world of the game, I believe that the developers have done such a great job in bringing their own creative look to the game. My hope is that this game will allow other developers to consider bringing about more modern remakes of classical games, especially those from the text adventure genre.

If you have played Colossal Cave or the original version of it, leave a comment below about what your experience has been like. If you are looking for any other games to bring you a little bit of nostalgia, I would suggest that you check out Mike Reitemeier’s review of Super Kiwi 64 for PC right here.

A PC review copy for Colossal Cave was provided by Cygnus Entertainment for this review.

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Colossal Cave

39.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Amazing Environment
• Modern Recreation of a Classic
• Mapping Options
• Multiple Control Schemes

Cons

• Occasional instances that happen multiple times