Arcade Castle: Episode 07 - The Colossal Cave Adventure

Arcade Castle: A Gaming Podcast

In Episode 07, Arcade Castle plumbs the depths of early text-based adventure gaming as they play a modern adaptation of one of the earliest video games ever made: Adventure/ADVENT/The Colossal Cave Adventure. While Adventure has seen many adaptations and modifications since its creation by Will Crowther in 1975, does this board game adaptation from 2013 deserve a place in the Well House, or cast into the Bottomless Pit?

In The Colossal Cave Adventure, players traverse the rooms and passages of The Colossal Cave and face the hazards and dangers therein in a quest for treasure. As players uncover mysterious items during their trek in The Colossal Cave, they will find these strange items are key to surviving the trials and tribulations they will face as well as finding the treasures housed within the cavernous passages and rooms of The Colossal Cave. As players acquire treasures, a race begins as players attempt to protect their treasures and deposit them in the Well House. The first player to deposit three treasures in the Well House can rightly call themselves the master of The Colossal Cave, and winner of the game!

In this (somewhat delayed) episode, Arcade Castle looks at a board game adaptation of an oft overlooked genre: text-based adventure games. Can you take a game that solely relies upon text as a user interface and successfully create a three dimensional board game that relies, in part, upon a GUI? Further, how can a developer take a solo experience and adapt it into a multi-player experience?

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Episode Outline

00:00 - 10:00: Arcade Castle gives a general overview of text-based adventure games and The Colossal Cave Adventure. Additionally, they discuss text-based adventure games and their progeny, old and new, and their experiences playing them.

10:00 - 20:00: [Once Upon A Powerup] Arcade Castle gives a more detailed history of the circumstances behind the creation of Adventure and The Colossal Cave Adventure as well as its impact upon the industry.

20:00 - 35:00: Arcade Castle takes an in-depth look at The Colossal Cave Board Game. Detailing the contents, rules, and gameplay, they examine the challenges faced when codefabing a text-game into a board game.

35:00-50:00: Arcade Castle gives their final thoughts on The Colossal Cave Board Game. They look at where it succeeds and where it fails in codefabing The Colossal Cave from digital text into cardboard and plastic. They also compare it's success rate in this process with games looked at in prior podcast episodes.