I would initially say that this game is made to torture people who refuse to quit. I tried the first couple of times on my own, and got to about 89 points. I ended up looking at six different guides and following three pretty closely several times. Needless to say, I was quite happy when I finally managed to combine two decent guides with some ingenuity and knowledge gained through a great deal of trial and error and actually got 350/350 points.
Firstly, I’ve never played text adventure games before. I played D&D for the first time last semester, and thought it was fun. But that might be more due to the fact that I had a great group of fellow players who were more open to cracking jokes and stacking dice than actually playing seriously and intensely, as well as a DM who was very open to even the craziest suggestions, and rules that were greatly toned down from anything “hard-core” D&D players might use. I didn’t much know what to expect with this besides “oh, it’s text-based, it’s probably easy”. I was wrong.
I admire a number of the cutesy bits put into the game. There aren’t many games where you can say that you beat a dragon with your bare hands. That I have to take my hat off to. I also admire the many avenues of exploration and the opportunity for secrets collection (reminiscent of games like “Tomb Raider” and “Super Mario Bros). Also, the tame bear was quite cute. Also, telling the user that “violence isn’t the answer” and that violence is also “futile” are very amusing to see. The many different ways of moving around and doing things are also quite neat, especially for something as “early” as this was.
I can also find parallels to more complicated, visual games like “World of Warcraft”, where drops for certain things are random and rely mainly on luck. Perhaps my biggest problem was the “luck” factor. While I played, I considered myself lucky to not be attacked by a little dwarf for seven steps or not have to restart from my last save because all my stuff got pirated when I was trying to get somewhere. Games like WoW possess this factor as well: drops for certain things, especially vanity items, are random and drop rates for the best things are often incredibly low, whereas in CCA, getting attacked is relatively high. When I compare CCA to visual games, I mean to say that someone else (like me) who isn’t used to text-adventure games needn’t fear: we can connect, too!
Another parallel to be drawn is to games like “Tomb Raider” (or really anything that involves some sort of dungeon and lacks an in-game map), where your best bet is to draw a map or seven while playing, to figure out where things are. I admire the way “Colossal Cave Adventure” is actually like a real cave and doesn’t simply go forward or back (or N/E/S/W, depending on where you are). My Dad is a GREAT person to ask for in-game map creation, especially when the makers of “Tomb Raider” just LOVE their underwater tunnel systems.
There are also parallels to draw to games like “Super Mario Bros.” or “Sonic the Hedgehog”, or really any game that involves saving. I actually really like the save/restore tool. It came in very handy, in comparison to games like Super Mario or “Oni” where you don’t get the option to save or have to reach checkpoints. I’ve always wondered on the preference for one or the other: a game that saves automatically at specific checkpoints level changes versus a game that lets the player save when they want. On the one hand, if you can’t choose yourself, you risk restarting over and over and over again and accumulating hours and hours of frustration as you go over parts you may know perfectly in order to get to those you don’t, etc. On the other, you risk not saving at the right times and still having that frustration as you start from way, way, WAY back.
The game might be trying to teach you to think on your toes. Certainly, games that do not change or have strategies that don’t change (unless glitches occur) are “relatively” easy to beat once you learn those strategies, or have access to the no-doubt plethora of guides available to you on them. If you play the game often enough, you’ll find that even unexpected bits like the little dwarf appearing every other step and harassing you or the pirate randomly stealing your treasures while trying to move somewhere can be easily beatable because you figure out patterns. Or you just save every time you collect something.
My second difficulty (well, besides connecting the dots “oh, I have keys, MAYBE they unlock the grate”) was finding the right vocabulary to use. I liked the variability and the ease, since you didn’t have to type out “run south” or “walk south” or “go south” or even “south”. You could just type in simple things like “n, e, s, w” and even “u, d” for “up” and “down” (here’s to laziness!). I have to wonder if there was a way to insert commas, since I tried a couple of times. I wish there had been a way to pick up the axe AND throw it at the little dwarf in one move, instead of risking death twice to throw and miss, and then pick it up. It also would have been nice to deposit everything you wanted to at the same time instead of “drop jewelry”, “drop rug”, etc. This was mainly annoying because the list filled the screen, and I had to pull my inventory back up to make sure I dropped everything on me (twice I forgot to drop something and had to go back and forth to take care of it, using up precious lamp oil).
An interesting adventure with a great deal of frustration (as most games, and even books, have). Text-based games (if they’re all somewhat close to this) clearly require a lot (or just a little, maybe, depending on who you are; I think I sit at the “a lot” end of the spectrum) of imagination and allow for more variability than I initially thought. If you get to the endgame… well, it’s worth it.
So, if you came to this game expecting it to compare favorably to World of Warcraft or Super Mario Brothers, then perhaps that’s my fault for not accurate creating expectations. And along those lines, it’s simply unreasonable and unfair to critique this game on the basis of that comparison. It’s like criticizing a painting for not having a good soundtrack. It doesn’t make sense. The only basis for any comparison at all is that you have an opinion on it, and that opinion in itself cannot be the basis of or constitute a critical or analytical response.
Don’t forget, what you’re looking at here is the FIRST text adventure game. One of the first computer games that many people ever played. If Crowther got a few things wrong in terms of game balance, I can hardly blame him.
I do appreciate that you attempted to play to the end, but really, many of your claims are simply evidence of your own impatience:
OK, well, that’s not all a game is. Obviously. And I guess maybe I should remind you that you ARE playing this game for class, not to escape anything.
Besides the fact that a book like this would probably be haunted (and thus, yeah, definitely get rid of that), this is another comparison that betrays your own impatience without offering any insight into the text itself. And, furthermore, there are major genres of literature (the non-electronic kind) that DO require significant effort to figure out or physically read through.
In the end, though, I’m left wondering why you wrote this blog. You do have some insight into the game (the issue of balance, fairness, exploration), but if, as you imply, you really hated it, why bother writing about it? If you felt the game was a waste of your time, why waste everyone else’s time with your blog entry about what a waste of time it is?
I can rewrite the post. Since I was having some frustration with the game (which I later figured out and completed perfectly… I don’t know if that was the time or not), I just wrote a post and tried to figure out whether I liked the game or not and why I didn’t. Basically the post cleared up some things for me. The game is reminiscent of things like Super Mario Brothers, where you sort of “save” every time you start a new level, and if you die you have to start the whole level over. You don’t just die, get rezzed, and then continue from where you left off. Writing the post actually cleared up a lot of my problems with it. I thought my biggest problem was that the game was so dissimilar from others and just made to be frustrating. But no, it actually has a lot of similarities to others. A LOT of others, besides the big names like Super Mario Brothers. The big difference is that it’s in written form, and might appeal more to people who aren’t so great with pressed ASXY quick roll whatever key combinations that games with controllers require, or learning moves to make you kill in different ways and get more points. So as a piece of interactive fiction, it might just appeal to people who like books and some video games over people who like video games and some books.
After completing the game, I actually thought the conclusion was quite funny. The “Wit’s End” part, especially. I took the “suggestions” wrote, and found the “Did you know?” section, which I hadn’t seen before in the help section. That was amusing, and I was actually sad that I hadn’t had a dwarf attack me at the dragon so that I could see it get burnt to a crisp.
The number of different treasures is also fun. It’s not just “collect 500 coins scattered throughout the game”, like a number of games have. You could get fifteen treasures that were all different (although I wonder what was in the chest).
Should I just delete the post then? Since it actually helped me figure out how to better play the game and helped me enjoy it more because I figured some things out, I thought I should just leave it.
It wasn’t really an expectation issue that was the problem. It was the fact that I’m not used to this type of game and wasn’t used to having to rely so much on a walkthrough or hints. I like figuring things out on my own and completing due to my own merit, which I had issues with in this game. I spent a great deal of time spamming different commands into the steps, including different words for unlock and speak (I couldn’t figure out how to say magic words >.<). Since the workings of the game were relatively simple, I had a "well that should have been obvious" moment about every five seconds.
I just need to chill when coming to games and look at the mechanics more. Once you figure out how things work, the game is enjoyable. Even the shifting parts. I expected to enjoy it because I did try D&D this past semester and it was fun to do, so… this makes sense.