Computer Games - Colossal Cave Adventure

Colossal Cave Adventure (shortened to Adventure on my Atari ST) was the first interactive fiction computer game I played.  According to Wikipedia, it was also the first adventure game to be written.

The premise was simple enough - you had to enter a colossal cave (based on the real life Mammoth Cave in Kentucky) and bring all of the treasure you find back to a small building outside.  You controlled your character by moving the around with the compass points and other commands such as 'kill', 'feed', 'drop', 'get'  and 'look' amongst others.

I always enjoyed wandering around the Colossal cave and enjoying the strange and funny encounters.  It had everything - a pirate, a troll, a dragon, dwarves, a bear and much more.  I never won this game.  My highest score was something rubbish like 76/350.  The decisions were a little arbitrary and required trial and error and I never had the patience to try everything.  There were some good tricks that you needed to learn such as learning how to kill the dragon, transporting the vase back to your house safely and getting that elusive final point.  I didn't find most of these things out until I read a walkththrough but the things I did find out I felt very smug about.

Colossal Cave has been an inspiration to other interactive fiction in various ways, not least the use of the phrase 'Xyzzy'.  There are even Xyzzy awards for interactive fiction.

The good thing about Colossal Cave now is that you can get it and play it for free in various ways and if you get stuck, you could find a walkthrough.  If you have an Android phone, you can get a Colossal Cave app for free.

You can play the Colossal Cave Adventure here

You can download Colossal Cave Adventure here.

You can buy a book about interactive fiction here.  The title, Twisty Little Passages, is another nod to a phrase from Colossal cave.

Computer games - Dragon Court

Dragon Court is a nice fantasy RPG that I came across in 2000.  The original game has not changed much (although there is now a Dragon Court 2) but it is still quite addictive and fun to play.  

You start the game by deciding on your character's guts (hit points), wits and charm scores and also deciding if they are trained as a fighter, trader (more like a rogue or wizard (you may choose not to train them in anything and put more points into your stats)

There is no story for the game.  You are given locations to explore where you will come across various creatures and people and you need to deal with them in some way.  Most of them you will either have to fight or run away from.  You can trade or help a few people.  If you train in wizard, trader or fighter skills, you can get more options (fighters can beserk, traders can swindle and backstab and wizards can hypnotize.)

After each encounter, you may get experience, money, items and a possible increase to guts, wits or charm.  Once you have gone up a few levels, more locations open up to you - a forest, mountains, goblin warrens, the Queen's castle, a couple of far off lands - where you can take on greater challenges and do some interaction with nobles and go up the royal ranks.

There is no real aim to the game, either.  You wander around and try to do as well as possible.  You have a limited number of 'quests' (actions) per day so you cannot go on forever.  However, once you have gone up a few levels and obtained more quests, playing a game for the day takes up a good amount of time.  

There is plenty of variety to the game.  It reminds me of Fabled Lands without the quests.  It is good to see your character improve over time.  The game also has a very nice community where you can talk to the other players and swap items with them.  If you are looking to model a simple system for your gamebooks or ideas for locations and encounters, the Dragon Quest is a good place to find inspiration.

You can play Dragon Quest here.

You can play Dragon Quest 2 here 

I obtained the screenshots from here where you can see more.

Computer games - Inselkampf

A build screen.  Click
here for a larger image.

Inselkampf (a literal translation from German is island struggle) is a graphics low strategy game where you rule an island.  You have to create buildings, raise an army, research new technology (spears, shields, bows, catapults and sails) and then sail forth to conquer new islands.  It is an extremely simple game to start with.  All you have to do is register then start building some new buildings.  You can find a guide to start yourself off here and look at the wiki to read about what everything does here.  Buildings are built, troops recruited and technologies are researched in a certain amount of time, so you can set the activity off and then log back in when it is complete.

The aim is to build a fleet of ships and to control as many islands as possible.  If you are lucky, you can find an unoccupied island to conquer.  However, when I played it, it seemed that a few people owned huge empires and armies which made it very difficult for newer players to get very far ahead (unless you joined one of their empires.)

A battle calculation.

Click here for a
larger image.

The game boils down to making calculations for sailing times and for battles to see if you can win.  There are other aspects such as mining and logging, trading resources and making alliances but eventually, you will probably get caught up in some war eventually.  

In terms of inspiration for gamebooks, it is a good guide for simple battles and managing settlements.  I have not played the game for some years so they may have sorted out the balance issues.  It is important in a game to make sure that everyone can advance and that a few people don't control most of the resources as that leaves out most of the players and stops them having much fun.

You can play Inselkampf here.

You can read the wiki for instructions here.

Inspirations for my gamebooks

I have written several posts about how other games provide ideas and inspiration for some of my gamebooks.  This post will give an overview on where ideas have come from and name a few sources.  In future posts, I will focus and analyze a computer game, an RPG or an aspect of Magic the Gathering.

Computer games


I have not actually played many 'big' computer games.  Most of my computer game playing was with the cover disks from the ST format magazine on an Atari ST which was a hand-me-down from an uncle.  I liked these games a bit too much,but some of them gave me some great ideas pretty much any aspect of a fantasy RPG such as monsters, items, what aspects of combat to focus on, magic, what stats to use, how to advance a character etc.

Years later, I got into some MMORPGs and also bought Diablo and Neverwinter Nights which also offered some other great ideas.

Magic the Gathering

This was another addiction of mine.  I was eleven when I first came across Magic in 1994 when I noticed two   sixth formers (17-18 year olds) playing this interesting fantasy card game.  One of them gave me Energy Tap (pity it wasn't Black Lotus).

I didn't think much of it at the time, but I loved analysing all the aspects of the card.  I loved hand reaching out to take the charged orb.  I had no idea what most of the words meant in the context of the game.  Populous 2 taught me that mana was magical power, but tapping?  Casting costs?  Creatures?  What was going on here?

I thought that the card was from some ancient Greek world based on the fact that the expansion symbol was a pillar, but I had no idea what the drop was in the right hand corner and what else could be written under the picture instead of sorcery.

A few years later, I found a shop that sold more magic cards which I found just as engrossing.  Someone from school gave me a rulebook and I bought enough old cards and lands to make a functional deck, which was nowhere near competitive with just about any deck that wasn't built by a two year old.  The MVP of my deck was Gravebane Zombie.  Why?  Because it wouldn't die.  However, my enthusiasm for magic survived these initial thrashings.

As well as playing the game, I enjoyed analysing the 'flavour' of the cards.  Why, for example, was a creature that deals damage blue, the colour of knowledge and countering spells?  Why was it not red, the colour of fire and spells taht deal damage.  It turns out that it shouldn't have been and a red version was made.

Magic the Gathering has also come up with some great characters in the form of legends and planeswalkers.  It also has its own stories which can be entertaining but I find them frustrationg because they have a high lethality rate for main characters before they have had proper development.


RPGs and games

I love reading RPG sourcebooks as they are a treasure horde of useful information.  What kind of background and skills could I give a character?  What monsters and NPCs could I use?  What treasure could I use?  What magical items could I add?  I have aread quite a few sourcebooks and obtained some great information about different worlds and how to approach them.  The RPG sourcebooks I have are:


Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 
Conan RPG
Tunnels and Trolls
Maelstrom RPG
Call of Cthulu
Heroquest
Dragon Warriors
Engel
Iron Heroes
Advanced Fighting Fantasy


I shall write an analysis of what these RPGs ahve helped me with in future posts.  


So that is something to look forward to on the blog.  


Have a good week!