Q&A with Roberta & Ken Williams, developers of Colossal Cave reimagined, launching today – PlayStation.Blog
Ken and Roberta Williams need a little introduction to adventure game fans. The duo, who founded legendary developer Sierra On-Line in the early days of gaming, have been responsible for some of the genre’s most innovative, bold, and memorable titles. The two have been out of game development for quite some time, but they’ve remained largely unnoticed – in recent years the pair have been honored with a Game Icon Award from The Game Awards and Roberta received the Pioneer Award at Game Developers Conference 2019.
Now, the successful tagging team is returning to the adventure game world after 25 years with a new development team, Cygnus Entertainment. The team’s first outing is a full remake of a true classic: The Giant Cave. Originally a pioneering text adventure game released in 1976 and called Colossal Cave Adventure, Colossal Cave turns the lime green text on a black background of the original into an online graphic adventure. attraction. The original game was a huge influence on many of the era’s designers, including Ken and Roberta, who are funding this ambitious remake. We sat down with the power duo to discuss their return to the world of game development and what players can expect when they return to game development.
This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
PlayStation.Blog: Roberta, can you tell us about your experience with the original text-based Giant Cave Adventure in 1976 or 1977?
Roberta: I have never played a computer game never. I think Colossal Cave could be the first or if not very close to the first computer game ever. And it was definitely the first adventure game — I mean, it basically invented the concept of an adventure game. So I played it, I loved it and I wanted to play more, but there weren’t really any games like it at the time. So I was inspired to sit down and design my own game, which eventually became Mystery House.
PSB: How did the original Colossal Cave Adventure affect the games you’ve made, Roberta?
Roberta: Colossal Cave invented most of the things that many of us game designers do [rely on], especially in the adventure game genre. It developed the idea of world mapping. Maze, get lost, go down a passage, go somewhere, but then get confused.… plus levels, puzzles and items in the inventory as well as creatures you can encounter there are can kill you. Colossal Cave brought in all the elements that had never been done before and that formed the basis for the adventure game. And can play games on the computer. I took some of those elements for Mystery House and I added more storytelling elements to it. It was my process to create my first game.
With Mystery House, I don’t know where to start. I mean, I had are not idea. “Why do you know?” But I think, I’ve always liked Clue, the board game. And I love Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries and detective stories and books. So I thought it would be fun to do a whodunnit, that would be fun to do. But how do I turn it into a game? And I thought, oh, I’m going to think about how I’m going to play a game of Clue. I put together, wrote the game and made it more like a story.
What I love [the original] Colossal Cave is its exploratory nature. I want to know where it went and how far I can go into this cave. I discovered that I love to explore, and caves are an ideal place to explore. So when I first started designing [Mystery House]I thought”I need to make it discover,” but I added mystery story elements. I want to keep that sense of discovery in my games.
PSB: What made you decide to go back to game development?
Roberta: So, literally, we’ve been out of business for 25 years…. And we decided to do this with the pandemic and the lockdown. We talked about it in late 2020 or early 2021. We had an enjoyable retirement here in Palm Desert, California, and sat in our coffee shop one morning, drinking coffee, overlooking the Coachella Valley… We were thinking about how bored we were and what we wanted to be done.
Ken wants to do a project and get back to programming. I suggested Giant Cave, and I don’t know why – It just came out of my mouth. Like the first time I played the original game, and I don’t know why but I just sat down and wrote a game…I’ve never done that. Strange.
Did you know, later that day, Ken told me he had finished talking to Don Woods (one of the original Colossal Cave developers). I said, “what? How did you do that!?” And Ken said, “Yes, I have my way. I guess we’re doing it.” But that started us on this one. And it’s been about a year and a half since then.
And we started with the idea that it would be pretty simple. We know we want it in 3D. He was secretly researching Unity and trying to get…. programming ribs. And he hired an artist, and the two of them set to work. I came a little late… at first I said, “I am not afraid to help. But I don’t want to really get involved.” I look over their shoulder and give them some advice every now and then.
Before I knew it, it was obvious that the word had leaked out. [laughs] People want to interview me about Colossal Cave and King’s Quest and all that. You know, “what are you doing, are you back?!” And at first, I was like, “Well, I really didn’t mean that… [laughs]. But I don’t know, maybe it’s me?”
Before I knew it, I was getting dragged into a few meetings with Unity, and suddenly I was back. And I’m not trying to sound egotistical or anything. Oddly enough, it was just like everyone expected it to. And I said, “Well, looks like I’m not going to get away with this.” And if I’m to be part of this, then I need to be very serious about it.
And once I’ve decided that I’m going to be a part of the design of the Giant Cave, that I can’t escape it, here we are. Since then, I’ve jumped in with my legs, arms, head, hair, everything else… but it completely changed the game. I said to Ken, “you want me to join, i join.” It’s a big project, and I’m proud of it.
PSB: What can longtime adventure gamers expect from Colossal Cave?
Roberta: it’s different [from our old games]. That is not the King’s Duties. First of all, it’s a first-person experience. There are no characters that you guide around. I was thinking about creating a player avatar generator, but I decided that I wanted to keep the Colossal Cave in its own right as much as possible. Don’t try to put yourself in there and make it my game. It’s a game by Will Crowther and Don Woods…I’m trying to bring this game to modern players to make it fun and engaging, in the world that Will Crowther and Patricia Crowther and Don Woods have made. picture in their mind. I want it to turn out the way I imagined it when I played it.
Second, Colossal Cave is much more purely exploratory [compared to the narrative focus on my older games]. I have restricted people to a certain extent in my old works…. You will stay in one area until you reach the next part of the story, which will take you to the next area of exploration with new objectives and other things you have to do.
But in Colossal Cave, you can go anywhere you want. That doesn’t mean you won’t have problems. You can figure out how to get through them, but you can also turn around and go elsewhere. You’ll find treasures, but you might not be sure what to do with them — but then someone might steal your treasure! And that begins a strategy for dealing with thieves and treasures. There are mazes; they are fun, quite complex and very interesting. And there are dwarves! They are dirty tiny creatures.
PSB: How has game development changed over the past 40 years?
Ken: Well, it got better and worse. There’s a lot of competition, that’s the first thing you notice. But there are also tools. All those years ago, we had to write our own text editor, graphic editor, animation editor, invent how to make sounds and how to create color graphics. Now for this project we can immediately be productive because of the free Unity engine, with great training materials. You can visit Unity’s website and buy assets at affordable prices. You can visit Adobe’s website and you can choose from thousands of animations.
It allows you to focus on game art and design. A lot of low-level stuff is lifted off your shoulders.
PSB: Is it difficult to develop during the pandemic?
Ken: We could not have done that without the emergence of working from home. We needed to get a team together quickly when Roberta joined the project, while I treat it as a hobby project to pass the time during COVID. When Roberta joined in, she said, “this must be Sierra quality. I need artists and programmers.” It continues to grow. And all of a sudden, I had to assemble a group of 30 good people quickly….can put together a group and not care where they live. In some ways, it’s better than working in an office.
Colossal Cave is coming to PS5 starting today, with versions for PS VR2 and PS4 also in development.
