Sierra titles may be unfamiliar to you, but rest assured you’ve played any popular game past 45 years, you’ve walked among its footsteps.
Originaly released franchise’s in 1976 year – among the first entirely text-quests, such amazing adventure becamed mainstream. Whenever player complete a maze by applying some inventory items or surroundings in creative ways. You can see the DNA of this game in most popular games nowadays.
In autumn 2022, the project will be coming back remake of Colossal Cave – “reimagined” edition, available for desktop, Switch and Meta Quest 2. Originaly created by Cygnus studio, owned by Roberta and Ken Williams, famous for theis Sierra games.
A conversation with game 3D designer demonstrated that the entire thing began by pure accident. He became interested in retro gaming as his hobby purchased a lot on Facebook Marketplace last year, which contained an extremely limited version of King’s Quest rare game.
This led Mera into performance at the museum, there he accidentally became good friends with Ken Williams. Within some time, Mera had been encouraging hime to step away from retirement to work on the interesting concern, becaming ultimately a fresh concept of game. Their friendship eventually convinced Roberta to join their team. Now they are financially supporting current game development completely out of their personal savings, declaring whenever it is completed, they will think about retirement or will keep working.
Cygnus had a stand at PAX West not long ago, giving visitors a playable pre-alpha release – Colossal Cave available to play on VR on the Quest 2 or using handhelp console Nintendo Switch.
A moment before I tried to relax and enjoy playing the game, Mera felt wary of focusing on title: “reimagined”. Just previously announced VR edition of Myst, Cygnus’ developers tried to re-invent as few of in-game details as needed. The game itself represents precisely what the title suggests: an original adventure in caves, revamped with a graphical UI since the first release in 1976
In accordance with the twin nature of designer Will Crowther – computer geek and a Dungeons & Dragons expert, says that first Colossal Cave developed to be as plotless as it gets. Colossal Cave will keep this trend: as a game character, he is nameless, basically unseen cave explorer, that was rumored to hold hidden valuables inside deep caves beneath your house. Players main task is to find a path inside, retrieve every single valuables relic, fight against the enemy residents, and try to escape unharmed.
Colossal Cave has kept all the common dillemas, enemies, missions and riches comparing to the old school text release, but with the upgraded interface and the same ideas.
After current release I was gaming with Quest 2, so directional movement have been assigned to the side sticks, still, teleportation abilities were available as well. In order to explore surroundings, some sort of cursor was attached to gamepad, resembling the multipurpose cursor you might be simmilar with familiar LucasArts titles. The default mode is set to investigate anything it’s hovering over, while pressing certain on-screen buttons switches it to a “grab” action. In order to activate object, you may click inventory tab, hower the cursor then drag the icon that appears onto the corresponding object into other object around you.
All the regular enemies were recreated accurately, as well as the dungeons themselves. The surroundings were imbued with a kind of passion and looks like some fan made cartoons. Every single detail of the underground world and all available NPC characters were accurately rendered into modern graphics, with hand-drawn patterns.
I wasn’t spending much time in Colossal Cave for since many decades, finaly saw it on PAX, however, much of the 3D animations didn’t actualy fit my expectations. It was like watching an animated novel you’ve already read down to the last detail. In my mind I always imagined the snake, for instance, as a rattle, as against the image of a cobra the size of a giand dog appearing and disappearing from Cygnus’s field of vision.
During game development, designers kept good amount of old-school mechanics. Colossal Cave is that type of challenging game that may murder player if he dont follow the general rules, many of correct decisions already felt crazy in 1979.
Simultaneously, the game looks like exploration tour into the evolution of computer games, so we made it possible and hired some developpers, who are skillful in VR. Every strange maze, cracking joke or strange decisions leaves a good memories and experience. Colossal Cave remains immersive VR action, but keeping cultural influence provides it with second chance. Sure, such project is old enough, however, people used to enjoy this specific game, and you must understand their nostalgic feelings.
Game should be released till the end of current year.