Good to have you back, guys
After pioneering the graphical adventure video game genre, Sierra On-Line founders Ken and Roberta Williams are finally making a return over twenty years after their last release. The project is titled Colossal Cave 3D Adventure, and is not a reboot of any old Sierra releases, as fans thought it might be after Ken Williams teased a new endeavor via Facebook post last year. The team is looking to bring Will Crowther and Don Woods’ classic to a new generation of gamers.
As Ken told PC Gamer, “It takes place in a fully immersive 3D and VR environment for a realistic cave exploration experience that is intended for the whole family.”
According to Roberta Williams, the pair ended up working on a new project after becoming “bored” during the pandemic. “Ken was bored and I suggested he write a book about Sierra,” she said. “The process of writing the book brought back long forgotten memories resulting in Ken deciding to learn Unity and deciding to make a game. We had no interest in starting another company. We were just looking for something fun to build and I had the idea of paying homage to the game that inspired our company and changed our lives.”
Colossal Cave Adventure is considered to be one of the most influential games of all time, not only because of its form, but also its content. It was one of the first “dungeon crawling” games, as well as one of the first entries in the adventure game genre.
Matt Baron’s book Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games said that the game facilitated the “creation of a virtual world and the means to explore it,” which is a pretty big deal because that’s, like, all games are now. Kentucky Route Zero went so far as to have a whole plot point and set piece as homage to the classic game.
On top of the success of the developers’ initial release, they went on to put out classics like King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Phantasmagoria, and even worked with Valve to publish the original Half-Life game.
Colossal Cave 3D Adventure is being shown at the Game Developers Conference this week, so here’s to hoping that we can get some more updates on the project soon. Although the game does not yet have a release date beyond targeting the fall 2022 window, we do know that it will be available to play on PC and VR platforms like Quest 2.
