Pirate Adventure
Pirate Adventure was created by Scott Adams, not Will Crowther. Crowther did create the earlier text adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, which was a major influence on Pirate Adventure.
Pirate Adventure was published in 1980 by Adventure International and was the second game in the company’s Adventureland series. It was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island and involved a quest to retrieve Long John Silver’s lost treasures. Gameplay involved moving from location to location, picking up any objects found there, and using them somewhere else to unlock puzzles.
Pirate Adventure was a commercial success and helped to popularize the text adventure genre. It was followed by a number of sequels and imitators, including The Lost Treasures of Infocom and The Secret of Monkey Island.
So, while Pirate Adventure was not the first text adventure game, it was one of the most influential and helped to pave the way for the genre.