REX

MINESHAFT

Feel your way through the dark. The drawings are on the walls.

The Mineshaft crew, New York, 1976
The Mineshaft crew · New York, 1976 · ph. Bob Moody

What you're about to see

What is the Mineshaft? A private leather-and-Levi's club behind an unmarked door in New York's Meatpacking District, open from 1976 until the city closed it in 1985 — two floors of bars, back rooms and play spaces, run on a famously strict dress code: no cologne, no suits, no attitude. REX drew its posters; this is his Mineshaft, from memory.

What is this game? Underneath, it's the original 1977 Colossal Cave Adventure — the first text adventure — reskinned as the club. You feel your way room to room in the dark, and REX's drawings hang on the walls, revealing under your light. The map, the two-word parser, the lamp and the magic words are all faithful to the original.

What controls will you have? Type a direction to move, or a verb and a thing — LOOK, TAKE lamp, INVENTORY. Along the top you can toggle sound, music and narration, and flip the 3-D "where are we" map in the upper-right corner. Or press PLAY-AUTO and let it walk the whole thing itself.

Turn your sound on. The door is the last easy light. · Leave the Mineshaft

Prototype — what's real vs. placeholder (walking skeleton)
  • REAL & FAITHFUL: the 1977 map & travel table, the two-word parser (5-char words, synonyms), room text, LOOK, inventory + the 7-item limit, the lamp & darkness, and the magic words (XYZZY / PLUGH / PLOVER) — all from the canonical adventure.yaml. The drawings are REX's real archive.
  • NOT YET WIRED: full puzzle logic (grate, dragon, troll, bridge…), combat, scoring, hints, save. Those verbs print a placeholder line.
  • PLACEHOLDER: room text is still original Adventure prose (the Mineshaft reskin is a later phase); the drawing shown per room is hashed, not yet themed; audio is a synthesized drone standing in for REX's real soundscape.
  • VOICE (two voices, stored clips only): the room narrator (Oracle / Alan Gans) and the command voice (Malkovich) are pre-rendered audio clips — there is NO live browser text-to-speech anywhere. Room descriptions are voiced (all rooms on the winning walk have an Alan clip); the short "OK"/"I see no X here" acknowledgements have no clip yet, so they are shown on screen but silent until those lines are rendered.