History VideoGame / ColossalCave

* LastLousyPoint: A particular tricky one, too.

* TheMaze: Three mazes complete with AlienGeometries

** The game detects if you take a few actions that renders reaching treasures impossible, such as not seeing spices when the bear crosses the bridge, or killing the bird. Instead of starting the endgame, it will drain the lamp's batteries to result in a failing ending. Draining only occurs once, thus purchasing batteries to keep the lamp running will result in 2500 turns of running about.

The dryly humorous, terse narration style of the game set the standard for future InteractiveFiction games. Much of the style also influenced early {{MUD}}s, still evident in modern examples.

** The Singing Sword, which is solely used to be thrown at the ogre, and requires being pulled from a stone. When thrown, it sings a few measures of ''Dies Irae'' (similar to OmniousLatinChanting), spins rapidly then obliterates the ogre into gray smoke. It was too much for the sword, which then melts but leaves behind a small silver ring.

* CoolSword: The Singing Sword.

* YouCantGetYeFlask: The UrExample.

* TimedMission: The brass lamp has enough power for 330 turns, enough for a walkthrough but not exploration. Asking to read instructions increases this to 1000. You can replenish it by buying batteries, using a hint, or a magic word within one of the extended versions.

** The original ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' has a nasty one near the end -- after you deposit the last treasure, you have a small number of moves to get back into the cave system before you're locked out of it (literally). If you're anywhere in the caves when the timer expires, then you're whisked to the last two locations; if you aren't, then you can't get back in -- and thus can't end the game.

*** If you give the troll a non-recoverable treasure to pass (as in, not the magic egg), then you'd have lost it forever and won't get it back.
*** If you return via the bridge with the bear still following you, the bridge breaks under the bear's weight, causing you to fall and die. You can then respawn back at the starting location, but once you make it back to the bridge room, the bridge will still be gone, and if you left something you need on the other side, you're doomed.
** The vase will break if dropped without the pillow on the floor.

* WaitingPuzzle: Once the player locates all the treasures, a sepulchral voice will intones "cave closing soon", and the cave will start to close, giving a limited number of turns to try to reach the exit. Exiting won't work, because the player is already locked within the cave, instead needs to find a way to waste turns for the clock to count down.

* HintSystem: Spending enough time at certain points will allow the game to provide a hint, at the cost of points.

* TimedMission: The brass lamp has enough power for 330 turns, enough for a walkthrough but not exploration. Asking to read instructions increases this to 1000. In addition, once the player locates all the treasures, a sepulchral voice intones "cave closing soon", and the cave will start to close, giving a limited number of turns to try to reach the exit.

* TimedMission: The brass lamp has enough power for 330 turns, enough for a walkthrough but not exploration. Asking to read instructions increases this to 1000. In addition, once the player locates all the treasures, the cave will start to close, giving a limited number of turns to try to reach the exit.

* TimedMission: The flashlight doesn't last forever. In addition, if you spend too many turns in the game without getting to the endgame area, a voice will intone "Cave closing soon."

* SaveScumming: From very early on, ports of the game attempted to discourage this -- either by deleting the saved state when it was restored, or refusing to load a saved state until a period of time (configurable by an administrator, defaulting to 90 minutes) had elapsed.

* TrollBridge: You have to hand over a piece of treasure to get past.

According to legend, Don Woods played Adventure in its original form, and attempted to contact Crowther for permission to expand the program. Naturally, Woods didn't have Crowther's mailing address, so he resorted to the fledgling Internet and e-mail; as the Internet itself had only about three hundred networked systems at the time, Woods [[TakeAThirdOption simply sent a blanket e-mail to]] 'crowther@' ''[[AllOfThem every]]'' network.

* DummiedOut: The 550- and 580- point versions contain functions to support running on a shared computer such as a mainframe, allowing time limited games or restricting play to between certain hours. On PC-hosted versions, all the code's still there, but the "is this a shared computer?" check is a dummy and so the rest of the code is never used.

* RandomEncounter: There are seven Dwarves wandering the caves, who will chase and throw knives at you.
** In the AGT port, there an infinite number, which randomly appear, block you from exiting a room, and can randomly throw their knife just as soon as they appear. This means you need to wear a magic cloak to prevent being insta-killed, and keep it and the axe for the whole game because there's an infinite number of them.

Much of the information on this page comes from the Jargon File entry.

** If you try to open the treasure vault with the wrong password, you're hunted down and killed by a Rover from ''Series/ThePrisoner''.

* AlliterativeTitle

* RandomEncounter: There are Dwarves wandering the caves, who will chase and throw knives at you. Some versions limit them to five. In the AGT version, there an infinite number, which randomly appear, block you from exiting a room, and can randomly throw their knife just as soon as they appear. This means you need to wear a magic cloak to prevent being insta-killed, and keep it for the whole game because there's an infinite number of them.

Much of the information on this page comes from the ''JargonFile'' entry.

!!Tropes

Advent is also responsible for the ClassicCheatCode [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xyzzy#xyzzy "XYZZY"]].

* [[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ The Jargon File]] under [[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/A/ADVENT.html Advent]].

* UnwinnableByDesign: Some absolute examples, and others that will make impossible to get the GoldenEnding, which in some versions is the only winnable state (in other versions alternate endings
are possible, but will not yield sufficient points to earn you the rank of adventure grandmaster)

* UnwinnableByDesign:

* TimedMission: If you spend too many turns in the game without getting to the endgame area, a voice will intone "Cave closing soon."

%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample * PuzzleBoss: The Dragon.