Ken and Roberta Williams to reopen Colossal Cave in 3D

Written by Jack Allin — March 21, 2022 at 16:21

While Ken and Roberta Williams are widely recognized as the pioneers of the graphic adventure with 1980's Mystery House, the first text adventure dates further back to Will Crowther's 1975 Colossal Cave (or ADVENT, or Adventure, as it was commonly known, thus inspiring the genre's name). Never before had Crowther's seminal work and the two legendary Sierra co-founders been connected in any way, but all that's about to change with the upcoming release of Colossal Cave 3D.

Unveiled for the first time at the 2022 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the first new project from Ken and Roberta in over two decades will be a "reimagining" of the original spelunking classic in first-person 3D for both VR and standard PC monitors. Under their new development moniker Cygnus Entertainment, Ken is doing coding while Roberta is responsible for "adapting the game for the VR world and bringing to life its many characters." The two have "completely recreated" the original experience for the millions of existing fans and a whole new generation of gamers alike, with the goal of creating a "realistic cave exploration experience that is intended for the whole family." 

As with its text-based predecessor, which was largely patterned after Crowther's personal experience exploring Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, the "largest cave system known in the world," Colossal Cave 3D will see players traverse "some 143 locations in the underground cave," only this time with the benefit of immersive real-time graphics. Rather than being driven by an overt narrative, your task is simply to find all the treasure hidden here. That won't be easy, however, as there will be a "wide variety of puzzles to overcome," as well as a number of encounters with the denizens of the deep, including "dwarves, trolls, a giant snake, a bear and even a fire breathing dragon."

Although the game will be playable on regular monitors in Windows and Mac, Ken Williams describes the VR experience on Quest 2 as a "mind blower." Of his own first-hand experience with the hardware, he says: "It absolutely feels like you are in the cave. I fell into a pit a few days ago while sharing the screen with some of our team and they heard me scream. It's a very spooky experience, and scared me." 

To learn more about Colossal Cave 3D, you can visit the the official website to begin following its progress. There is currently no target release date just yet, but it is currently on track to launch sometime in August or September, with other platforms likely to follow later on. The game will originally be available exclusively for download, but with plans to also offer a "USB-stick-based boxed version that will be sold at retail and on Amazon." 
 

Note: This article was updated on March 24th to reflect the first video released.