Adventure : Colossal Caves Intro

I have recently found out an interesting set of games called 'Text Based Games' thanks to Sheldon in Big Bang Theory (S04E06). Even though he is using an emulator to play the games I searched the web and found out some interesting online based games. Up to this day all the games that I have played are based on graphics and clicking. However these set of games does not involve graphics and I suspect that this is the way that games were created before we had GUI based operating systems. I highly doubt that the people who play games for their graphics will be interested in these type of games. But even though you are one of them go ahead and give it a try because who knows.

The game that I played was 'Colossal Cave' and found it quite interesting. I wasted several hours to figure out how to play the game and I loved the learning curve of it. Generally it is like a 'scavenger hunt', you start at one point and you need to find your way to the finish step by step. Each step should be carried out by typing commands and you can forget your mouse. If you have gone through one of my previous articles Typing Correctly you can use this game to test your typing skills as well. If you have not read the article I invite you to read it and share your opinions with me :D At the moment I started writing this article I have completed the stage 1 of the game and now I am stuck in a maze and it seems like it will take me sometime to figure this out :(

In the beginning you start the game from a location called "At End of Road" and it gives you a small explanation of your surrounding. You are expected to carry out some small tasks one by one in order to progress in the game. You can use commands like 'go south, go north, go west, go northwest' etc to move in the map horizontally and use 'go up, go down' to move vertically. The map however you have to draw it in your imagination and picture in your head what your next move is going to be. Since it takes a lot of time to figure out the start I will give give you a heads up.

Do not try to go into the forest or have a walk in the valley like I did because it is a time killer :P You need to enter the building first. Use 'go in the building', 'go east' (because building is in to the east of you) or 'enter the building' commands. If you successfully went in to the building it will say that you are 'In the building' and you can see these items on the floor'. Try picking them up with 'Take object' command. If you do not know what objects are available for you to pick up type 'look' and hit enter. When you pick up those objects you can carry out some tasks with them like fill the bottle with water, light the lamp or eat food(Don't eat it now I don't know if you are going to need it later). If you want to pick all of them up at once type 'Take all'. To find out what objects you currently posses use 'inventory' commands.