2016 is the fortieth anniversary year of Crowther and Woods’ original Adventure (also known as ADVENT, Colossal Cave, or Colossal Cave Adventure) – possibly the first work of computer interactive fiction.
Interactive fiction has grown, changed and branched in 40 years, and that is awesome.
Lest this momentous anniversary pass us by, I am announcing THE YEAR OF ADVENTURE: a year-round, free-form, non-competitive jam for games inspired by, paying homage to, or otherwise tangentially related to Adventure or other early works of IF, running from now until the end of 2016.
Submissions can be of any length, developed in any system, parser, choice, hypertext, dice-and-paper or anything else, and may be (but are not limited to):
“cover versions” or reimaginings of the original Adventure (which is in the public domain)
revisits to old games, showing them from new perspectives or using new trends in IF technology
retro-style games evocative of the early IF era
This is partly inspired by Carolyn VanEseltine’s recent post on cover songs and IF. Thanks also to Mathbrush for coming up with the name.
I’m going to enter this jam, even if it means delaying progress on my WIP. Does anyone know the copyright status of David Baggett’s TADS port “Colossal Cave Revisited?” I’m either planning on making a rewrite of Adventure or making an homage to early IF. Either way, I may end up using some of David’s Code. Yes, I’m writing the game using TADS 2.
There’s been a short game entered to the jam, “Realistic Zork” by lempamo. You can get it here.
It’s a DOS game, so you might need something like Dosbox to run it on a computer newer than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
I’m working on a faithful recreation of Crowther/Woods in Tidepool, my 3D codable storytelling world. I’m working off the rediscovered Woods data files, having written a parser that reads them directly.
You’ll be able to play the whole thing from the command line, or by interacting with objects and doors around you. Everyone will be able to draw their own version of everything … dragon, walls, lamp, etc.
Anyway, I was very pleased to see this topic. I’m well aware of the anniversary. Had a great talk with Don Woods some months back about it, which of course inspired me.
If all goes according to plan, I may have a playable version by next weekend. Stay tuned.
Some more contributions are coming in! We now have Owlor’s short “Colossal Rave” and Josh “Cheeseness” Bush’s demo implementation of Adventure in his Icicle engine. Both are linked to from the jam page at http://versificator.net/year-of-adventure.