Roberta mapped out Mystery House in a quiet frenzy after playing the original Colossal Cave Adventure, a text-only game, in the late 1970s – as an avid reader, she was inspired by its interactivity and narrative heft, and her imagination got to work. Mystery House was Sierra On-Line’s debut game and when it landed in 1980, it was the first-ever graphic adventure. “And I don't know why, and I mentioned it to him and I saw his eyes kind of light up.” “I hadn't really wanted to get back in the industry, but I just suddenly felt this urge, almost kind of like when I sat down and did Mystery House,” Roberta said. “You know, it's like, is this a sign?” In the morning, Roberta brought her late-night revelation to Ken. “I remember laying there and thinking, why did it do that?” she said. That night when she was in bed, mulling over her husband’s dull-sounding idea, Colossal Cave Adventure popped into her head. Ken assured her it would be, but she wasn’t convinced. “He was telling me this and he had some ideas on how to do it and make it fun,” Roberta said. Kind of like Roblox, but with more emphasis on learning real-world programming skills. Ken outlined a game idea he was toying with, where players would learn programming as they went, building simple experiences within his digital ecosystem. “But anyway, after that we were looking for something to do and I noticed that Ken was doing a lot of YouTube tutorials on some sort of 3D engine, some sort of 3D programming language.” “Which didn't sell as well as his book,” Roberta said, laughing. Ken wrote four books about their travels during this time, plus another one about Sierra On-Line Roberta wrote a historical novel about the Great Famine in Ireland. They would land wherever they wanted and spend a few months, half a year, in one spot before hopping back on the trawler and sailing to a new location. Instead of staring at computer screens and dreaming of digital worlds, Roberta and Ken spent 15 years traveling the planet on a 60-foot boat. “It was like, if we thought about it too much, we could be drawn back in,” Roberta said. She and Ken have kept tabs on the industry, but mostly, they’ve been checked out. It’s been a quarter of a century since they last stepped into the world of game development, and they’re jumping straight into VR and Unity, a 3D development platform.īy her own admission, Roberta hasn’t even played games for the past 25 years. That last bit is especially important, considering 3D development is a new arena for Roberta and Ken, who are best known for ’80s and ’90s narrative adventures and full-motion video titles. We have a really good team and I'm just so excited to have met them – not in person – but they're very experienced in 3D graphics and programming.” I've learned a lot, Ken has learned a lot. “There have been moments that Ken and I have said, what are we doing? Why did we do this? And other moments are just really exhilarating and exciting. “We've had our stressful moments,” Roberta said. There are 16 people on their team at Cygnus Entertainment and they’ve all worked together remotely through the COVID-19 pandemic. In traditional Williams fashion, Ken is in charge of the code as chief engineer, while Roberta is creative director, building the narrative and working across all aspects of the project. Not only will this new interpretation add graphics to the text adventure, but it’ll be in first-person 3D, with details filled in by the minds that brought us King’s Quest and Phantasmagoria. Maybe that’s an old project with a new twist, but regardless, Colossal Cave 3D Adventure is a complete reimagining of the original title and it’s due to come out this fall for PC and Quest 2 VR headsets. After 25 years out of the video game industry, the legendary founders of Sierra On-Line are working on a new project with an old twist – they’re rebuilding the classic text-based game Colossal Cave Adventure as a 3D experience with a VR component.
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