Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

Maker:
Infocom
Year:
1981
Systems:
PC (Booter) / PC (DOS)
Genre:
Adventure
Tags:
Sword & Sorcery / Text-based
Language:
English
Median Rating:
4/5

Opinion Back Then

I was intrigued and amused the the replies, some of which were over a screenful of text. […] I haven’t yet drained a reservoir, or even found the magic well, but I’ve been to places that my friends haven’t even heard of. That’s how big it is!

Keith Campbell, Computer+Video Games #19 

Thoughts by Mr Creosote (18 Jan 2011) – PC (DOS)

So, how does a game end up with a ‘1’ in its title anyway? Zork began its life as a much larger game on Mainframe computers. After it was decided to exploit its potential commercially, regular home computers became the limiting target. So Zork was split into three parts – this one being the first.

At the time, Zork’s parser was revolutionary. The common standard of adventure games was VERB NOUN parsers in those days. Zork came much closer to understanding natural language, even the combination certain commands into full sentences was possible. This, however, doesn’t win the game anymore points these days. How does it hold up stripped of that advantage over the competition?

Zork I shows its roots in the cave exploration/treasure hunt genre. Without further explanation, the nameless protagonist enters a house and finds a system of underground caves below. He has to explore it and retrieve as many treasures as possible. This includes various subquests which can be played more or less independently from each other. This is a useful approach, because a(nother) thief is roaming the caves as well, just waiting to snatch things away from you. Sooner or later, you’ll have to get rid off him, too. In the meantime, storing your treasures securely in the house before going down again seems sensible.

The game is written with a good sense of irony. In this context, the game is quite self-aware, breaking the fourth wall regularly. The background of the IT university labs is very much visible in the allusions and jokes – the more similar one’s own background, the better.

Puzzles are mostly self-contained, but still original and anything but trivial. Questionable in this respect: you’ll encounter random elements regularly. Also, there is an overall time limit, governed by your brass lantern simply failing after a (generous) amount of overall time.

These are minor annoyances at best, though, because they are implemented in a way which doesn’t frustrate the player too much, either by occurring too often or having too strong an impact. Zork is still an entertaining treasure hunt – non-pretentious fun.

Interesting historical tidbit: Infocom actually tried to translate the underlying engine and Zork itself into German at one point. The project never escaped early beta status, though, most likely due to German grammar being harder to parse in a canonical way than the English one. The unfinished beta version appeared on the Internet many years later. It contains some hilariously clunky prose and switches back to English right in the middle.

Archived Thoughts

Thoughts by Emtucifor (12 May 2016) – PC (DOS)

After the Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork I is the next significant historical text adventure (also called interactive fiction) that everyone interested in classic computer games should know, play, and love.

The game is vast and an absolute delight to play. You’ll face puzzles galore, and yes, you’ll be frustrated, and annoyed, and will get stuck and will die and will waste all sorts of time. But the struggle is worth it, and when you emerge victorious, you’ll feel a true sense of accomplishment. The game will stay in your memory for the rest of your life as one of the true classics. I first played it shortly after it came out, probably in 1982, and I remember it with great fondness. It was so satisfying to fill the trophy case with each treasure that I had found, and to check my points to see how close I had come to a perfect score.

With its advanced text parser, compared to the Colossal Cave, you won’t spend nearly as much time struggling to find the right command to achieve the effect you want. It’s clear and helpful, and you can use a conversational style. It accepts many-word commands such as "turn bolt with wrench”, and helpfully clarifies incomplete commands such as "turn bolt” with "what do you want to turn it with?”

The game is full of wit and humor. It’s fun. Even as you realize you have to go back to your last save, you’ll snicker and laugh at what just happened.

There are elements hearkening back to the Colossal Cave that you’ll recognize such as the maze of passages, all alike. There is a shadowy figure gesturing to you. There is a pirate who will kill you as soon as look at you! And you may not always be able to vanquish your foes—though sometimes you will.

Start playing today!

Box

PC (DOS)

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Screenshots

PC (DOS)

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Play

Files

TGOD button #1 TGOD button #2