What was the first text adventure game?

The first widely recognized text adventure game was Colossal Cave Adventure, written by Will Crowther around 1976 and expanded by Don Woods in 1977. It let players explore a cave system by typing short commands like 'go west' or 'take lamp', and it established conventions that shaped the whole genre. It directly inspired Zork, created at MIT in the late 1970s, which became one of the most famous early text adventures. These games ran on mainframes and early home computers long before graphics were practical, proving that words alone could build an immersive world. The lineage from Colossal Cave runs straight through to modern interactive fiction and choice-based story games, which you can still play in the browser on the play page.