I’ve started roaming around in Colossal Cave and it’s quite a relaxing experience knowing that the goal of the game is just explore the cave and find some treasure. No gigantic “save the world plot” this time and no random battles when you’re just standing still to take in the sights like in my previous game Final Fantasy VII.

I’ve already profited from my purchase of the physical collector’s edition in a small way, because in the manual you can read that the bird might be frightened by something that’s in your inventory. That was an helpful hints that didn’t cost me points. There is an help system in the game, but using it costs you points. I’m not going for a maximum score, but I would like to postpone getting help at least until I have explored all the areas you can access without trouble.

I already figured out where you can use the item for that the bird is scared off. And I also figured out where the bird can be used for, although that wasn’t very intuitive because the target of the bird is much larger than the bird itself which makes it slightly illogical. The target (the snake) is probably depicted much bigger than the “huge green fierce snake” in the original Colossal Cave Adventure, thereby making this puzzle a little ridiculous.

What’s not contrary to the previous game I played – which ended in crashing during the final boss fight – is that this game also crashes out on me. And it’s a game breaking bug that occurs every time that I try to descent a ladder. So frustrating! I’m playing this on PS4, whereas FFVII crashed on PS5. I already tried to rebuild the database, but that hasn’t helped. Next I’ll try to approach the ladder not facing down, because I read somewhere that that might prevent the bug. After that I’ll try my other PS4 and start over which is no hassle because I haven’t gotten that far in the game yet. I’m not prepared to reset my PS4, because that means losing saves from other games. Maybe, if I’ll transfer them to my other PS4, but then I’ll rather try to play it on PC. I got the game on the cool battery USB-stick in the Collector’s Edition after all.