A hollow voice says “Let’s Play Colossal Cave”

Wow, we’re looking at a classic here. Colossal Cave is the first game that really qualified as a Text Adventure game. While it wasn’t the first game to use text commands it was the first one that used the descriptions to built a visual stunning world. Part of this was due to the fact that the original game was based on a real cave system (not Colossal Cave as you might expect but Bedquilt Cave). The style of writing and game play inspired a lot of people, including a little group at MIT who went on to make a little game called Zork.

Colossal Cave, which is also known as ADVENT, Adventure and Colossal Cave Adventure, is really an interesting mix of real locations plus some nice light fantasy elements mixed in. It’s also the originator of many classic gaming elements, from “XYZZY” to “A maze of twisty little passages, all alike” and the lesser known “A maze of twisty little passages, all different.”

The history of the game is rather interesting, including such things as spamming the whole internet, which was much smaller at the time. I’m no expert on the whole thing, but you can find a nice history of the game right over here. This site also has a lot of game hints so fair warning if you want to go through the LP unspoiled.

The original version of the game understood two words commands (“GO EAST” “TAKE LAMP” and so on). This was more a limit of the system on which it was written then anything else. The version I’m playing here is the Inform port, it’s a fairly faithful port of the game and keeps the puzzles and items intact.

As for myself, I’ve been playing Colossal Cave since I was a kid, it was the first text adventure game I ever drew a map for and to be honest I still play it now and again. I also have a confession to make, I have NEVER actually finished the game. In fact I’ve never made it to the end game at all, but I have gotten the last lousy point… go figure.

So, not only is this Let’s Play an exploration of this classic game, it’s also an attempt to do something I’ve never been able to pull off before. I think it will go pretty well.

I’ve only done one other LP before, so I’m still a bit rough around the edges. Sadly I also don’t have the artistic skills that Loki shows in his recently finished Zork LP. I’m also going to follow his lead on the general formatting of the LP, in character notation will be in normal text and comments on the game will be in blue. I’ll also post a puzzle list, inventory and score at the end of each section. Heck, why change what he’s proven to work.

And here we go!

This...this is some fortuitous timing. It bodes well.

Hey! Nice timing!

In all the years of my t'venturing I've never played this game. I grew up with Zork and I guess it felt like a step back and thus not worth the time to my younger self. I tried playing the iPhone port that came out a couple of years ago but it was bad and made me sad. I didn't get far at all. I'm really looking forward to this LP. I'm excited to finally have context for all these in-jokes.

SAY PLUGH

Finally! I've been trying to get a Fun Club for this game going for.. uh.. over a year now? And it never happens. "Oh, let's play a Metroid game." "Oh, let's play some Metal Gear game." BULLCRAP. PLAY ADVENTURE.

Anyway, this would be more readable if all the text wasn't blue.

The things you agree to when you’re on a drunken bender moaning the loss of a portal to another world. Okay, so yes I bragged that I was a world renowned treasure hunter with skills that put Indiana Jones to shame. I might have exaggerated just a little bit… Well, okay, I lied the whole night, that’s beside the point.

So where does that get me… apparently dumped in the woods in the middle of Kentucky, or at least that’s what my GPS tells me. Except that it’s my notepad, not a GPS… but it’s still telling me I’m in Kentucky. How drunk was I last night.

At least I made some notes for myself. Let’s see, there’s a cave in the middle of Kentucky where treasure has been hidden. Well I like treasure, that’s a good picking me up from this hang over. I just need to be safe and watch out for the… okay my handwriting is normally bad but I think I’ve degenerated into some sort of pictographic language instead of English. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so drunk I ended up writing in hieroglyphs. I hope the warning wasn’t to important. Aw, who am I kidding, I’m sure it was nothing at all.

So I’m awake and mostly sober, where the heck am I?

Okay, so here is where I am, next to a small building in the middle of a forest. At least it’s not a white house, that would have been a bit too much to take. Okay, let’s see what’s inside.

Seems like the basic bits and pieces I need o go digging into a cave, or at least act like I know what I’m doing. Though some rope, glow sticks, radios, mapping tools or the like would be nicer as well. And a hard hat, and more light, and the ability to tell anyone I’m about to crawl under the earth. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.

Made sure to get some nice fresh spring water to go along with everything else. Now that I’m provisioned I’m going to step outside and see if I can find the cave. For the moment I’m just going to follow the stream to see where it takes me. Why? Well, water carves caves, right?

>s
Okay, so much for water, lets head downstream. Which is to the south from here. In the original game you could enter the name of the adjacent room to go to it so you could just say ‘downstream’ and follow along. This port doesn’t have that.

Ah, I bet that explains the keys!

Well, I made it into the cave, that’s one hurdle down. Though down I need to get deeper into this place. Though that crawl looks pretty low. Let me see if I can get through it. It is kind of tight really, kind of make me wish I was a bit trimmer.

Okay, I have pretty much no head space and I’m worried about getting stuck, but hey there’s a cage here. That’s kind of a odd place to leave it, but I’m sure I can put some treasures in it. So let’s snag it and move on.

Maybe I should have thought about this a bit more. Luckily I have my lamp, It shouldn’t be to turn on the pitch darkness, it’s just a switch anyways.

Room to stand up again, that’s something at least, though it’s still pretty tight quarters. Why would someone leave a black rod down here. It seems kind of silly to do. I wonder if there is anything special about it.

Well… that was descriptive. [The original game was writing on a fairly restrictive system, this means a lot of things have short descriptions so looking at things doesn’t always help much.]

And the magic word is XYZZY, I wonder--

What the!!! How did I get back here. Wait, was that all a hangover dream. No… I’m pretty muddy and dirty, so what the heck happened? Wait, all I said was XYZZY and--

Okay, so that IS a magic word. That would have come in handy back when I was in the building so I didn’t have to climb through the dirt and the mud. Why couldn’t someone have written it in the building? That would have made far more sense, right? Well, I’ll do that when I’m done in here. For now, I’m going to press on.

Wow… that’s an amazing sight, the way the orange stone ripples in waves around the walls, climbing up all the way to the ceiling. I can hardly see the top of the room with my little lamp, it just seems to vanish into the darkness. Seriously, if you can find a picture of this room in the real cave, it’s rather impressive.

And look at the little bird, it seems pretty happy that it’s stuck down here inside the cave. Luckily I have bird cage, so I can help it out of here. And I’m in a cave underground, a bird might be a good thing to have along… just to be safe.

Or not, dumb bird, I’m just trying to help you, but hey, if you want to be stuck down here so be it. Pressing on.

Oh, look at that, I got myself some points. As for the room, this place is huge! The mist is pretty heavy and fills the chamber. That means there has to be some water down here somewhere so this mist could form. That means I don’t have to be too stingy with my one bottle of water, though I don’t want to drink too much of the water down here, it’s going to be pretty mineral heavy.

Well, that seems to be the end of that. I can kind of make out something though the miss on the other side of the fissure, but I have no idea how to get across. So time to go back to the Hall of Mists.

Finally some treasure! So I won’t get it up the steps, we’ll see about that!

Okay, the gold is simply too big for me to carry it and climb back up the steps. So I guess I won’t be getting up the dome with this gold. I wonder how I’m going to get it out. I’ll have to think about it. For now though, lets head a bit deeper down into the cave.

That’s not a pleasant looking snake. I’m going to try and slip past it before it sees me.

Well, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to get out of here before the snake decides to attack me. I’m pretty sure it’s poisonous, at least it looks like that. Eithor way I don’t want to find out the hard way.

You know what, I think I’m going to take a little break here. After that I’m going to work out how to get around some of these obstacles in my path because there really isn’t any other way to go if I don’t.

Puzzles:
Catching the bird.
Crossing the fissure.
Getting past the snake.

Inventory:
You are carrying:
a large gold nugget
a black rod with a rusty star on the end
a wicker cage (which is open but empty)
a small bottle
some bottled water
a brass lantern (providing light)
some tasty food
a set of keys

You have so far scored 68 out of a possible 350, in 25 turns, earning you the rank of Adventurer.

Deaths: 0 (but the game is still young)

I know, I was surprised by that myself. I love how karma works out sometimes.

Well the blue text is only for the out of game commentary, the majority of the LP will be in normal text.

Hope you all enjoy the game, and once again I want to thank you for the inspiration Loki. I kind of wish I had any more skill then in making a map to spice this up, you're a hard act to follow.

Sorry. I think you're doing a great job so far!

It's crazy how the room descriptions are so sparse. You would think they'd be overflowing with description as they're based on a real place. And the lack of a list of room exits must make playing a chore. How do you know where you can go!?

However, sometimes the sparse descriptions are evocative in a way that a longer description wouldn't be. The description for the rod is just about perfect. The "rusty star" on the end creates a picture of it in my mind that doesn't need a longer description, and gives it a personality far beyond "a three foot long magic wand."

It... it is a magic wand right? It's got a star on the end? Can you magic the snake? Please magic the snake.

Can you use the magic word to deposit the nugget in the wellhouse? For that matter, does it always work that way (meaning you have as much water as you need)?

I think part of that is because of the original system and language the game was written in. I suspect that put a limit on how much text you could put into the game.

I guess it kind of does look like a magic wand, so let’s go see what happens when I zap the snake with it! A quick trip down the wide staircase and I’m back in front of the little beasty. Alright snake, let’s see how you fare against this!

Okay, the game doesn’t know how to point things… well it’s a wand, maybe a wave?

Right, of course, nothing happens at all. What are wands good for in the first place, I might as well wave my hands around. Well, the rod gives me a good three feet on the snake, so let’s try the direct approach.

So there we go, no help with the rod against the snake, though I do like the idea of it being a magic wand, it feels like a magic wand, with the star and all. I just wonder what sort of magic it might have.

Now that is a very good idea. So let’s give it a try! Though I’m going to go back up to get away from the snake first. Okay magic work, do your stuff. XYZZY!

Oh… I hope that didn’t work only the one time. Maybe I’m saying it wrong, I should go back and check, I have a bad memory for words that look like mathematical equations, so it’s probably safe to be sure to double check it, and write it down this time.

So, I’m going to drop the gold down here and head back up to the debris room. The silly bird is still sitting by the orange rocks, not even bothered unless I try to pick it up. I wonder if I can befriend it. Well, that’s for later.

Okay, so I was right, it was XYZZY now why--

Oh, I see! XYZZY only--

That’s disconcerting. The magic word only works between the two rooms. That’s useful but it doesn’t get the gold up here. Which is too bad, that was a good idea, maybe there’s some other way to get the gold back to this room. Or maybe there are other rooms like this one. I’ll have to try. For now it’s back down to the Hall of Mist to keep an eye on my gold. You know, unless the snake tries to steal it.

Puzzles:
Catching the bird.
Crossing the fissure.
Getting past the snake.

Inventory:
You are carrying:
a large gold nugget
a black rod with a rusty star on the end
a wicker cage (which is open but empty)
a small bottle
some bottled water
a brass lantern (providing light)
some tasty food
a set of keys

You have so far scored 68 out of a possible 350, in 25 turns, earning you the rank of Adventurer.

Deaths: 0 (but the game is still young)

Given that I've actually read the (translation into C of) ADVENT source code, I'd better stay out of this one so as to not spoil too much. But I'll be reading with interest!

Snakes hate wicker, I'm assuming.

Why not try to catch the one with the other?

Technically, it has to have an equal sign in it to be an equation.

xy=zzy Solve for X.

Oh, that’s a good idea, maybe I can put the snake in the cage. Let’s give that a try. First off I’m going to put the gold nugget down here. As much as I would like to keep running around with a few dozen pounds in gold.. it’s a few dozen pound in gold. I only have so much room in my backpack and this is heavy!

How mean. Okay, let’s get down to the Hall of the Mountain King and see if we can’t catch ourselves a snake.

Okay, this snake is tougher then I thought. I’m not going to be able to get around it with just my bare hands and a cage. I’m going to have to do something else to get this snake out of the way.

I didn’t get a chance to really address this one, so let me use this room as an example. There is usually enough hints in the room description to work out most of the exits, the rest is just trial and error. Take this room for instance.]

Quote:

Hall of the Mountain King You are in the hall of the mountain king, with passages off in all directions.

When I try the cardinal directions I find the snake is blocking my way. But if I try something odd, like say down I get this:

Quote:

>d Well, perhaps not quite all directions.

Clever, but a little annoying, so you end up trying all different sorts of directions to see what you can find, this is where a map comes in handy. Of course it’s worth edging around the snake to see if I can seek by, it’s not like anything is going to YELP!!!

No joke, I found this one by accident while poking around in the room for the above note. Seems like it’s semi-random if the snake will block you if you try to go in this direction.

Okay, I should have seen that wall wasn’t there, going head over heels into a small narrow canyon isn’t exactly what I can a fun time. Luckily I didn’t fall down the hole to the canyon below, I’m not sure I could make it back up that. Still, it gets me past that annoying snake, hopefully I can find something back here that will help with matters.

You’ll excuse me if I have to run off like a little girl. RUNAWAY!!!!!

A dragon… I did not expect to run into a dragon down here. Goodness this is getting to be a very weird cave. Magic rods that don’t work, dragons, birds and cages. On the other hand I think that run he was sitting on was worth something, but I’m not so sure I want to go in there and find out.

So, I guess the question is, do I go down the hole and maybe not make it back up… or try to get past the snake?

Puzzles:
Catching the bird.
Crossing the fissure.
Getting past the snake.
Getting the gold out of the cave.
Killing the Dragon!

Inventory:
a black rod with a rusty star on the end
a wicker cage (which is open but empty)
a small bottle
some bottled water
a brass lantern (providing light)
some tasty food
a set of keys

You have so far scored 63 out of a possible 350, in 34 turns, earning you the rank of Adventurer.

Deaths: 0 (I’m sure that will soon change)

Punch that stupid ol' dragon in its big, stupid dragon nose!

You get past the snake by going into a secret room that isn't listed and sometimes the snake blocks? I declair this game unfair and bad! You might as well go down into the canyon. Maybe you won't be able to get back up but it's not like you're going to get out of this cave anyway. And who knows, you might find a pair of snake gloves or something.

It's not so much unfair (it did kind of clue you in to check 'all directions') is that it was first. This game does a number of things that later on would be considered problematic in future games. One of the downsides when nothing has come before, you don't know what you shouldn't be doing.

This means it has things like the last lousy point and fairly thin clues. On the other hand it means the the puzzles are pretty simple and solution is usually fairly close to the puzzle itself. In fact we can solve one puzzle right now without to much moon logic which gives us the piece we need for a slightly moon logic solution to another.

Interestingly enough, one of the puzzles we've run into doesn't have to be solved to finished the game, and no, it's not the snake. We need to solve that one.

Also, what's that dragon doing laying on a rug? Everybody knows that a dragon's bed should be a hoard of gold. You should stuff him into that cage for being such a terrible example of dragon-hood.

The rug is woven out of golden thread. Classy!

I’m going to have to agree with you on this one, who does this dragon think he is, hording a fancy rug instead of gold. I was promised gold, and more then that nugget I can’t get up the stairs. So ya, let’s go show this dragon who’s boss! At worse I’ll get an interesting death out of it, right?

Wow, that sounds strange to say.

Really, is that it, the dragon just sits there and looks at me as I wave the cage around. It’s not even bothering to blow fire at me. I mean seriously, what sort of dragon is this? All it’s doing is just sitting there. Come on! Do something you stupid beast!

You know what, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! I’m doing to walk up to that dumb do nothing dragon and pop it one right in the nose!

What… I killed the dragon but… punching it in the nose? I AM THE GREATEST! Muhammad Ali eat your heart out! You might have taken out George Foreman but I punched a dragon so hard I was able to kill it! Oh yeah, I’m the MAN!

Oh, and we get a rug!

Sweat, looks like we got some treasure, and maybe we can even take it back up stairs before I run out of hands to carry everything. Though I want to take a look around a bit before I do that. No reason to have to go back until I have to drop something.

Hum, that mirror looks interesting, but why is it so high, and what’s with the windows up there. Why would someone put a window up the side of the wall, or put a mirror between the two windows, couldn’t you put it on the wall or something, would that be easier? Apparently dwarves are not only vain, but also enjoy over complicating things.

Wait, what am I talking about? Dwarves… well I guess after that dragon Dwarves would make just as much sense. Not that I would have believed it a couple hours ago, but that was back when I was on the surface.

Ah! See, I told you there had to be some sort of fresh water down here, and look at all the mist, I bet you were under the fissure in the hall of mist. Not that it helps me that much unless I need some water, but it’s good to know that it’s here, I guess. I can’t really push on from this point, so I’m going to head back up to the debris room and put the rug away.

Nice! Extra points for safety keeping.

You know what, I’m going to see if I can catch this dang bird. I’m tired of its cheerful song mocking my inability to capture it. Let’s see, I can’t just grab it… so maybe I can lure it over it.

How can it be pinin’ for the fjords, it’s clearly not dead yet!

Okay, lets thing about this logically, it doesn’t seem to have an issue with me unless I get close. Maybe it doesn’t like something that I’m carrying? Okay, there is no reason to suspect that, but I can’t think of anything else. My guess, it doesn’t like the bird cage.

Okay, so I need the cage… maybe something else? Well, let’s try the reverse, let’s put everything down but the cage and try it then.

Yes! Got it. I have no idea what it didn’t care for but I got the dumb bird. Now I feel much safer going deeper down into the cave, lets me have some early warning in case something happens. Now, let’s keep going. We have two choices once we get past the snake, decisions decisions.

Protip: It was the black rod that was freaking the bird out. The game actually has an option to tell you this, plus other things, if you die a couple times. Though we honestly haven’t had a death yet, and the RNG seems to be in our favor. That can’t last.

Puzzles:
Crossing the fissure.
Getting past the snake.
Getting the gold out of the cave.

You are carrying:
a black rod with a rusty star on the end
a small bottle
some bottled water
a brass lantern (providing light)
some tasty food
a set of keys
a wicker cage (which is closed)
a little bird

Treasure:
A Persian Rug (stained with Dragon’s Blood)

You have so far scored 79 out of a possible 350, in 63 turns, earning you the rank of Adventurer.

Deaths: 0 (To good to last)

Is that the real way to get past the dragon or some kind of crazy easter egg? 'Cause if it's the real way this game is even worse than I first thought.

Can you show us the clue that we didn't get to see that explains why the bird hates the rod? In any case, now that we've got the bird let's see how it reacts with the snake. Can you swim across the reservoir? Is there any way up to those windows to get a better look at the mirror?

Also, those aren't literal windows in the mirror room. In caving terminology "window" is any hole in the wall that gives a view of an adjoining room. http://wasg.iinet.net.au/glossary.html

Still doesn't explain the mirror.

It's the real way. It's an intentional joke, a sort of anti-reference to the way you kill the snake.

Well, in The Uninvited, using the Bird on a Snake would kill the snake. But it made the bird also kill you.

That wouldn't be ideal, but it's not like most of this games puzzles are sensible, so try using the Bird on the Snake and hope for better results?

I say you roll the snake up in the rug. Then you will have the perfect means of disposing of your enemies!

The closest thing we get to a hint is "You'd probably be better off using your bare hands than that thing!" when you try to use something on the dragon. This was back in the days of the two word interpreter, so if you wanted to KILL DRAGON you couldn't say with what until it asked the question. That's not to say that it's also not one of the least discoverable puzzles in the game.

I did some digging around and discovered that the clue was in the 'help' not in the 'interesting stuff' after you finish the game. Here's the paragraph in question.

The only downside with this clue is that if you have any experience playing any IF games you would never load up help, and lets be honest, normal players wouldn't be jumping into this as their first game.

I know of this game only through my dad, who said that when he and his co-workers would play this game when it was new (!) at his job, "he disappeared in a puff of greasy black smoke" became the universal way of telling people that so-and-so was out sick for the day.

Back when this game was released, for probably all its players it would have been the first text adventure they'd ever played. After starting a genre, you'd expect a game to have a reasonable help/tutorial. But then, given its age, maybe not.

Okay, that seems like it would be worth giving a try. At worse the snake kills me, or the bird kills me, or something odd like that. So I’ll head back down to the Hall of the Mountain King. The snake is still here, that’s almost reassuring, so let’s see what the bird things of the snake.

That’s one ass kicking bird right there. It doesn’t quiet as kick much ass as I do, but I killed a dragon so you really can’t match that now can you? Either way we have one less snake to worry about, at least for the time being. I’m sure it will show up again, right?

So, let’s start by going…. South.

Nice, the snake was guarding some treasure, and we get a nice bump of points as well. All in all a win for beating the snake. That leaves us a few more places to explore around here.

Oh! There’s one of the dwarfs. Doesn’t look all that vain to me, I wonder what he wants--

Yikes! That was crazy. I mean what was the point of all that, I’m just wondering around looting treasure and killing dragons and this dwarf comes out of nowhere and tries to kill me… Okay so many he does have a point, but still, that’s just rude. On the other hand he did leave an axe laying around, that could come in handy in case I run into another snake.

I’m surprised it took this long to run into a dwarf, usually I see them pretty early on in the game. That’s one random event down, a couple more to go.

I doubt I’ll need the bird again, so we can leave the cage down here with him. It keeps the snake away. Which way to go now? Well, south got me some treasure, so North seems like it would be a good choice next. So let’s head up that way.

Well, another way down lower into the caves, and even more treasure, I’m getting a good feeling about this. Lets grab that silver!

I… I just got mugged… in cave, by a pirate. The guy took both the jewels I was carrying before and the silver here at my feet. At least I know where he put it, it’s hidden in the maze… wait, there’s a maze? Oh great, there’s a maze, and you know this means I’m going to have to find my way through it. Damn.

On the other hand, I just got mugged by a pirate. Seriously, now cool is that? Now we just need some ninjas, on my side of course.

And that would be the second random encounter, and it had to happen when I had two treasures at once. This sort of thing shows up in a lot of early IF games, including the thief in Zork. And now random events pretty much in a row, looks like the RNG is getting back in proper form.

Wow, what a view! You know what, I think I’m going to stay away from the edge of that window because there isn’t any glass here, just the fact that my tunnel intersects with this big old pit. I wonder who is over there on the other side of the pit? I wonder if I can contact him? Maybe I shouldn’t, it could be the pirate, I don’t want him finding me again, and it’s too tall to be a dwarf.

And more mist hanging around at the bottom of the pit, I wonder if this pit is near the hall of mist or the reservoir. Wait… there was that canyon with the giant mirror right before the reservoir. There were windows into that pit, so I wonder…

I bet you I’m looking at the mirror, or the guy on the other side is really good at pantomime. Well, lets check the other direction from the Y2 room.

Wait, who said that? Is there someone down here with me? You can’t just go around saying nonsense words while I can’t see you? Come on, show yourself? Anyone…

Okay, looks like I’m hearing things now. Great, just what I need to be doing in a cave, hearing nonsense words like Plugh, what does that—

Oh sweet, it’s another secret word! Now if I just had some treasure to drop here. Bloody pirate. Wait, I’m remembering something…

The last secret word didn’t work, but maybe Plugh will!

While I’m down here I’m going to check out what’s to the east. If there’s another treasure there I don’t want it stolen by the pirate again.

Okay, this looks a bit problematic, things have shifted around here. Okay, I’ll have to try going in as many directions as I can. Can’t just go back west, and the other directions aren’t very good. In fact It looks like I can get out up here by climbing up or down, so… let’s just go up and get out of here. This is another one of those rooms where they don’t tell you the exit, sadly there are no secrets around here and I don’t think you need to see my trying every direction to work my way out.

How fortuitous, my little exploration brought me right back to the gold I was looking for. I can’t really go back down the way I came, the rocks are a bit too tight to climb down, but I can do back in the normal fashion. So I’m going to go down the steps, work my way back to the Y2 rock, say the magic word, then drop off the gold.

And more points for me, nice! Alright, there are still a few directions off of the Hall of the Mountain King I need to explore, so time to head back.

Great, another one of those dwarfs. You know what, I’m not going to wait for him to throw something else at me, I’m going to strike first… you know, in self defense. At least that’s what I would tell anyone if they ask. It’s better to be safe than sorry, right? Anyways, after killing that dragon everything else seems pretty minor.

Okay, taken care of that dwarf! That’s what he gets for being so threatening looking, anyways, the last time I saw him he tried to kill me, so it’s only fair. I guess I have better aim then he had.

After all of that, I think I’m going to take a break, and there’s still lots of places to look through for treasure.

At this point much of the cave is open to us, and there is a lot more exploration to come, including the next level down to which we’ve found three entrances. Still, there is a little bit more on this level, but that’s for the next update.

Puzzles:
Crossing the fissure
Finding the Pirate’s treasure in the maze

You are carrying:
a dwarvish axe
a black rod with a rusty star on the end
a small bottle
some bottled water
a brass lantern (providing light)
some tasty food
a set of keys

Treasure:
A Persian Rug (stained with Dragon’s Blood)
A Large Gold Nugget

You have so far scored 91 out of a possible 350, in 97 turns, earning you the rank of Adventurer.

Deaths: 0 (If this was a King’s Quest game it would be in the 30s my now…)

Luckily it did have some basic help which this version of the game copied. On the other hand there's at least one puzzle that is much harder to solve because of it's age. I'll cover that when we solve it.

Colossal Cave seems pretty interesting, except for the whole "try directions randomly until you get out" thing. I'd like to see a remake of these old classic IF games, with things like making the game unwinnable removed, and with the directions clearly labeled on each screen.

That would be nice, I think there are some like that, but most seem to just add even more to the game. Some modern games have 'exits' as a command and most will list any exit that is clearly visible. I think that's the default for inform games.

Interesting enough, the Inform engine also supports the Objects and Places meta commands. One lists every object you've touched and the other is every room that you've seen. They are more useful for debugging then anything else.