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howtomakeagingersnap-blog · 5 years

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ADVENT, 1977

When Adventure (shortened to ADVENT) was released in 1977, creator and developer Will Crowther merely wanted to connect with his daughters. An avid cave explorer and spelunker, Crowther had intended to create a digital role playing game that allowed his daughters to interact with a fictional world on their own terms. This open-world format would later go on to be the very foundation of modern role playing games like the ever popular Elder Scrolls or Fallout series(owned by Bethesda Studios).

In the game, using an “action-object” format for inserting commands (such as “throw axe”, players can explore a system of caves that feature mythological creatures, pirates, magic objects and phrases, and labyrinth like mazes that connect them all. The game is ultimately a puzzle; the player must pay attention to key phrases and winding maps in order to reach their objective.

My personal experience with Adventure was simultaneously infuriating and engaging. The objective is still unclear, but I’m happy to explore this strange world presented within the cave system all the same. The puzzles are certainly mind boggling at times, some of my solves have been less due to intelligent deduction and more a result of randomly combining actions and objects until I get a result. I enjoy the whimsical, illogical nature of the game. Until I’ve figured out the set of rules that defines the world created by Adventure, a lot of what I’m doing is experimental. I’ve taken a playground approach to the game, in that I simply wander and interact with what I can and attempt to solve puzzles, without any sort of long term goal in mind. As long as I’m able to discover new parts of the map and new things to interact with, new puzzles to solve, I’m satisfied. The game is hypnotic in a sense; I feel like the protagonist of my favorite novel due to the text based storytelling format. I feel like a hobbit wandering through a dragon’s lair. It makes sense to me that this form of fiction would be so engaging to me, however- I’ve been an avid reader since a young age, and instead of simply escaping into someone else’s world, in the case of Adventure, the fictional world in question becomes my own, and I an active, participating party within it.

In addition to being simply mind bogglingly fun, Adventure has a significant amount of literary value. Although I’m yet to reach it’s conclusion, the story definitely follows a distinct structure that is consistent with fantasy, fairy tales, and great epics- The Hero’s Journey. The distinguished professor of mythology, Dr. Joseph Campbell, described this journey to be one that is followed by a great number of heroes in literature and myth. Achilles, Odysseus, Beowulf, and more all followed along this structure of story on their path to legacy. George Lucas, in fact, personally consulted Dr. Campbell while writing the story of Star Wars. In the Hero’s Journey, the story is divided up into three parts, each of which has multiple sub parts. These plot points are carried out in a specific chronology, which inevitably results in the hero’s victory over their plight.

***If you’re attempting to avoid spoilers, stop reading here***

First, the Departure. The departure begins set in the ordinary world, where the hero encounters nothing beyond the day to day of their life. In Adventure, this takes place at the End of the Road. The hero then receives their call to adventure, which propels them along their journey. In this case, it’s the exploration of the world of Adventure, wherein players first find a set of items in a well house, and then follow a valley and streambed, which brings the player to a grate in the ground. The hero meets a mentor, who can guide and assist them in their quest but must not interfere; much like the narration system of Adventure does to players. The final part of the Departure, according to Campbell, is the Crossing of the Threshold. Campbell’s theory states that the hero must get past a test of sorts for a guardian or gatekeeper to pass the threshold and into the world of their adventure. Just like Campbell says, in Adventure, the player must solve the first puzzle of the game; the grate. The player must have grabbed the set of keys in the well house in order to unlock the grate, after which they can enter the grate, and into the fantastic world of Adventure.

Next in Campbell’s cycle is the Initiation. This phase begins with tests that the hero must pass. The hero is required to grow along their journey, and these tests prepare them for what lies ahead while also ensuring that they are worthy of the quest’s reward. They must acquire allies and face small enemies, cooperating in order to succeed while also learning how to distinguish foes. Adventure mirrors this step as well. The player must grab important objects, like a bird cage and a rod, take note of the magic word “XYZZY”, and catch the bird, which will be needed later. They enter the pit, and must fight off angry dwarves and distract massive snakes that block their way. As the hero continues with the Initiation phase, they prepare for their greatest challenge. Campbell describes this as the “Approach to the Innermost Cave”; a very fitting description for Crowther’s Adventure. As the climax of the story approaches, the hero is faced with increasingly difficult enemies and puzzles. This too applies to Adventure. After exploring the entirety of the Hall of Mists and off shooting rooms, players are likely to realize that waving the rod creates a crystal bridge across the fissure at the end of the hall. Before they figure that out, however, they must get past the snakes in the hall of kings, lurking dwarves with knives and axes, and a frustratingly limited inventory system that only allows for some of the items players come across to be taken at once, despite all likely being significant. On the other side of the crystal bridge, players encounter their biggest challenge and puzzle yet: the maze.

Before continuing further with my comparison of Campbell’s Heroic Journey and Crowther’s Adventure, I must get deeper into the plot of Adventure. I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface so far. I’ll include two screencasts of some of my interactions with the game from this weekend in my next post. The first will be of my first five minutes playing during one session, the other from the last five minutes of that session. There’s about a two to three hour gap between the two screencasts, because I assumed three hours of content was far too much for anyone to watch, but it should effectively outline my progress. The first screencast contains more gameplay, with no narration and just a little background music, whereas the second screencast is full of narration and review of that session. In the second screencast I don’t input too many commands; this is primarily because I had repeated every action I could think of in each room at least twice before even hopping on the screencast. I was looking for any details or places to go I might have potentially missed, and when I was unable to find some, I attempted to tackle the maze, but simply didn’t get anywhere while trying to solve it.

I’ll definitely be playing again, most likely after consulting with other players about what to do next.

Even though I interacted with Adventure as part of a college course, I highly recommend it to anyone who might enjoy reading books, especially of the fantasy genre, or to anyone who enjoys RPG games, either console or tabletop. The joy of being the protagonist in your favorite story is indescribable. For once, I’m not shaking my head as protagonists make clearly bad choices. This time, I get to make the bad decisions, and I bear the consequences with pride.

I’ll include the link to Adventure in my next post, where I’ll be including the screencasts of my session as well.

If there’s one thing I learned from playing this game, it’s that I named this blog very aptly- the puzzles and frustrations of this game are certainly a major point of it’s appeal, but may also shed some light on why so many RPG gamers end up going bald at such a young age from stress.

#IFSpring2019 #interactivefiction #advent #adventure #joseph campbell #plugh

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