Ken and Roberta Williams were happily retired.
“People kept asking if we wanted to do another game. We really didn’t say anything, and we meant it,” Ken tells me as the three of us sit down in the lobby of Seattle’s Hotel Theodore, across the street from PAX West. The couple has been married 50 years this year.
Ken and Roberta Williams, the legendary co-founders of Sierra On-Line and arguably the “parents” of the entire genre of adventure games, retired from the video game industry in 1999, bought a boat big enough to live on and never looked back. more back.
‘We were on a real-life adventure. We went to 27 countries with two small dogs, and we would have continued to do so except for this COVID event,” Ken tells me with an air of jovial frustration.
“So we went home,” Roberta interrupts.
“(During COVID) I was bored,” confesses Ken. ‘(Roberta) said I should write a book. I was about to write everything but Sierra, but Sierra was all I knew. So that got me thinking about games and…” Ken pauses, “and then I suggested… Colossal Cave!’, Roberta concludes.
Colossal Cave Adventure
For those who were as ignorant as myself, Colossal Cave Adventure is a text adventure developed by spelunker Will Crowther in 1976. It was discovered a year later by programmer Don Woods, who expanded the game by adding fantasy elements and more complex puzzles.
Woods’ build became the obsession of a young Roberta Williams, who convinced her programmer husband Ken to help build a similar game, but after her design – mystery house. It was a hit and the couple quickly shifted the focus of their fledgling company from enterprise software to games. The Sierra On-Line empire that dominated the PC gaming landscape of the 80s and 90s was born.
In the present day, Ken was tinkering with his… Colossal Cave remake for a few months with the thought of reaching out to a publisher that lingers vaguely in the back of his mind. However, it was a chance meeting with artist Marcus Mera that would really shape the project.
“I started the game, but I didn’t have an artist at the time,” says Ken. “I was doing a presentation and Marcus happened to be presenting after me. We were in the green room and getting ready to talk. He said he was an artist and I said, “Hey, I’m doing a game!” He said, “Do you want to be an artist?” And I said, “Sure!” So he started making the art for my game, and it would just be him and me.’
‘I don’t even know why they thought they could do a game like’ Colossal Cave, (only) the two of them’, says Roberta incredulously. ‘I said you can’t do that’ Colossal Cave. If you do it, it has to be done right.’
With that, Roberta came on board as a creative lead and soon a team of over 30 people was contracted for the project.
Despite the shift to a modern 3D engine, preserving the integrity of Crowther and Woods’ work remained absolutely essential for everyone involved, especially Roberta.
“It’s a very elegant design,” says Roberta. “It’s really good, and it hasn’t really gotten the credit I think it deserves. It says ‘Reimagined by Roberta Williams’, I’m not the designer. I claim not to be. It’s their design. It’s their game.’
“I actually found it harder to do this game than my own games because when you design your own game, you design it the way you want it.”
Hands-on with Colossal Cave Reimagined
I need a long playthrough of Colossal Cave Redesignedwith both the Nintendo Switch and Meta Quest 2 VR versions of the game at PAX West 2022, and can confirm that despite the shift to first-person 3D, the game remains firmly rooted in old-fashioned text adventure design sensibilities.
Exploration and trial-and-error interaction with inventory items are the pillars of the gameplay experience. I actually died immediately only minutes into my first play session because I didn’t equip the lamp when I set foot in the cave.
However, I never felt annoyed or frustrated while playing, even as someone who didn’t grow up with these types of games. There’s just something really charming and wonderful about the whole experience, like seeing the foundations of the video game medium laid out in front of you, to explore and play with at your leisure.
The Switch version of the game lets players navigate the environment using a standard control scheme, while the VR version uses a controller-based point-to-point navigation system with full head tracking to look around. Both versions ran great, but the VR release definitely has the edge, in terms of immersive atmosphere.
The game will undoubtedly not be for everyone due to its defiantly old-fashioned sensibilities, but Ken and Roberta Williams are totally fine with that.
“If I’d still been using Sierra, I don’t know if I would have done this or not. This game is being built to preserve history,” says Ken. “We’re not going to get a bigger car. We’re not getting a bigger boat. In the end, sooner or later we might be able to, but we can’t, we’re not trying to build a big company.’
“It really is a labor of love. That’s what I’d like to call it,” says Roberta.
“We’ve seen a few bugs along the way, because we’re getting so close to the source, and overall we’ve pretty much left them in there,” adds Ken.
‘We look in the source and if it is there, we do that,’ continues Roberta.
“I think I’m a pretty good person to have done this because I revered the game so much,” added Roberta. “It was important to me that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right and really bring it to today’s players and show them because it’s just something that has to be seen. It’s historic, it’s iconic, it’s classic, and it shouldn’t be forgotten.’
Colossal Cave Redesigned by Roberta Williams is slated for release later this year on Nintendo Switch, Epic Games Store and Meta Quest 2.
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