Colossal Cave and all of its progeny are relatively complicated games requiring that you remember where you have been and where you end up going each time you move in and out of a room.
The map is not linear; going north from one room to another does not necessarily mean you can go back where you came from by going south. Some rooms are dead ends, and there are two mazes where getting out of them is much more difficult than getting into them.
Many people will draw a map on paper to show the directions they have gone and the items that they have found, as well as what is where. If you do not know where you've been and what you've done, the game will be very frustrating as some things will happen that are hard to understand or to figure out how to resolve.