PunyInform Adventure, Release 5

November 16, 2025
Posted in Acorn Atom, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Amstrad PCW Plus, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, Atari XL/XE, BBC Micro, Commodore 128, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Commodore PET, Commodore Plus/4, Commodore VIC-20, Community Showcase, Dragon 32, Featured Article, Free Games, Freeware, Linux, Macintosh, MSX, Oric, PC, Retro Gaming, Retro News, Texas TI-99/4A, Text Adventure Games, TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo), Web Based, ZX Spectrum, ZX Spectrum Next

About a year ago, I released this port of the 350 point Adventure, the game which is often considered as the very first text adventure.

The game is available at https://microheaven.com/advent/

The original game

Will Crowther, a programmer in the daytime, a cave explorer in his freetime, wrote a text based game where the geography was based on part of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, as a fun diversion to share with friends and his daughters. He wrote it in 1975, and left it on a server connected to ARPAnet, the precursor of Internet (Crowther was also part of a small team that created ARPAnet). Don Woods, a researcher at Stanford University, found the game in spring of 1976, contacted Crowther, got the source code, and expanded the game heavily. The most wellknown version that he released, is the 350 point version. The game is sometimes called Colossal Cave Adventure, sometimes just Adventure, or even Advent, because the file system on the DEC-10 that Crowther used limited file names to six characters.

The PunyInform port

The PunyInform port is based on the Inform 6 port of the game which, in turn, is based on the TADS2 port. About a month ago, I read about a few known bugs in the Inform 6 port, which I realized must also be present in the PunyInform port. I mentioned this on a forum, and got some help from Andrew Plotkin in spotting differences between the Inform 6 port and its predecessors, some clearly bugs or oversights, some design choices. I decided to fix the obvious bugs in the PunyInform port, and at the same time update the game to make it more like what I think it was intended to be. All in all, this new version makes the game a bit harder, by making some puzzles or limitations mandatory again.

What’s new in Release 5

The following list, while somewhat spoilery, summarizes the most important changes I made:

  • The cage can now hold three small items (was unlimited). The game was designed with an inventory limit, but the cage made the limit meaningless. In the original, only the bird can go in the cage, so this version is still a bit easier.
  • Putting items in the cage won’t make them invisible to the game logic. E.g. before this the player could bring items where they shouldn’t be able to, or avoid having them stolen, by putting them in the cage.
  • If the lantern goes out and fresh batteries are in cage or on Y2 rock (if nearby), batteries are now switched automatically
  • Getting a treasure out of the cage inside the building won’t mess up the score anymore
  • If the player uses a magic word in “At Y2” to travel to “In Plover room”, while carrying the emerald, they drop the emerald in “At Y2” (emerald used to be dropped in Plover room).
  • When crystal bridge disappears at cave closing time, it doesn’t reappear again
  • Going west from Witt’s End now always fails, instead of leading to Ante room
  • The game now simulates five dwarves moving around independently, instead of just one dwarf with five lives, sometimes appearing. This means you can have several dwarves in the room with you, all trying to kill you.
  • Teleporting (e.g. typing “GO END OF ROAD” or just “END”) has been changed so it can’t be used to slip by passages where certain objects restrict movement, e.g. you can’t climb the dome while carrying the nugget. This brings back puzzles which could just be ignored by teleporting.
  • Teleporting from or to a dark location or a location down in the proper cave system, now requires holding the lantern, which must be giving off light
  • Teleporting through the locked grate is now blocked
  • End game changed to mimic TADS2 version. Read up on it at https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/07/an-adventure-walkthrough if you’re interested (very spoilery!)
  • Walking around using just direction words accidentally got slow in last release, now it’s fast again.
Adventure, on C128 in 80-column mode

The game is available for the following platforms:

  • Commodore PET, VIC-20, C64, C128, Plus/4, Amiga
  • MEGA65
  • Commander X16
  • Spectrum +3, Next
  • Atari 8-bit, ST
  • BBC Micro, Acorn Electron
  • Dragon 64
  • Amstrad CPC, PCW
  • MS-DOS
  • MSX 1/2
  • Classic Macintosh
  • Sam Coupé
  • Apple II
  • Oric Atmos, Telestrat
  • TI99/4a
  • TRS Coco
  • DEC Rainbow
  • Osborne 1
  • Kaypro
  • CP/M
  • Any modern computer

You can download the game, or play it online, at https://microheaven.com/advent/

Author: Fredrik Ramsberg
Text adventure fan, player and author since the eighties. Current projects include Ozmoo (a Z-code interpreter for the C64) and PunyInform (a lightweight Inform 6 library for writing text adventures for 8-bit platforms and newer computers)
Website