Zork I

5 star: (51) 4 star: (95) 3 star: (44) 2 star: (15) 1 star: (6)

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A nice commercial clean-up of the MIT version, February 3, 2016

Until last week, I had no idea that Infocom games were still available on current platforms. After downloading an iPad app, I had the pleasure of trying my first commercial game after 5 years of free interactive fiction.

The manual and feelies were great, and the parser was very smooth, with great runtime. I missed several of Inform's features, especially when killing enemies. Overall, the game felt thoroughly tested, and a large number of the annoying features of MIT Zork were removed. Examples include a better coal maze, some of the smug writing, and better correlation between exits and etrances of nearby rooms.

I thought at first it was silly to split up the game into three, but having started Zork II, I am really enjoying the expanded versions. Very few of the free games I have played rival this kind of polished game, with Curses! and Anchorhead as my main examples of great gameplay.

Great Game, October 5, 2013

This is one of the best ones out there

Zork, October 22, 2011

In this game you explore a very intricate world full of confusing paths and underground tunnels looking for treasure to add to your collection.The list of treasures you are searching for is 20 items long and can only be found through exploring.
Enemies are easy and far in between so after a good 20 minutes of game play It becomes more of a exploring game; But your one light source is not eternal so saving often and then going back to get items using less moves is a must. You'll also find that many of the puzzles in the game are quite challenging.
the downsides are that the movement in certain areas are off, no real story line and most the game is spent trying to find out how to get around quickly.

AMAZING!!!, September 28, 2011

I am thrilled with this game. It is amazing. This is one of my many favorite text-adventures. FIVE STARS!

:), May 31, 2011

This is one of the greatest games in history!

addicting and fun, even for the young generation of IF players., June 26, 2010

I enjoyed Zork very much, I thought it was brilliant. It is important to me to emphasize that Zork isn't only good for the sense of nostalgia.

When Zork was at its glory commercial days I was still in diapers, so I cannot be blamed for having special feelings for the game. I have played it on a modern laptop using gargoyle, and have never seen it on flickering green commodore screen. Still, I enjoyed it very much.

after I got the point, the game-play was addicting. Zork has no story, but none is needed. The game has a huge world full of puzzles, that are very interesting and lots of fun. Thats all there is to it. The game can be played for a long time. I still haven't gotten all the points available. ((Spoiler - click to show) weird egg that keeps on breaking.)

Of course, it took me awhile to get used to some strange things that I had not encountered in more "modern IF" such as a limit in inventory, a limited light source, mazes and a thief. The vocabulary was not as good as I had usually seen in polished games, and the descriptions were minimal. But, after I got used to the thief and the limits these seemed strong points to me, that added to the depth of the game-play.Also, I didn't feel like anything was missing from the descriptions.

I must also say some parts of the game can be frustrating since it is easy to make the game un-winnable, and you'll probably have to play it a few times through ( (Spoiler - click to show) once for example, the thief stole my matches and i couldn't find them in any room, so I couldn't banish the demons or complete the puzzle with the gas room ).

Even though it has flaws, and needs getting used to (to players of more modern IF). After a short while it's flaws are barely noticeable, and the game flows. It has addicting gameplay and fun puzzles. A definite must-play In my humble opinion... even if you are from the younger generation of If players, like me.

Without Which, this page would not be here, March 17, 2010

I played Zork I back in the 80's when it was the new thing. I missed out on the original dungeon and cave adventure until much later when the internet made every game available, but I still go back to Zork time and again for a refreshing review.

The game has no real story to speak of. You are an AFGNCAAP wandering around the cave complex in the basement of someone's house collecting valuable items and putting them in his treasure box.

The game had some well thought out puzzles, and plenty of amusing things to do when you were bored. It also had cute little extras, like mirrors you could teleport with or walls you could teleport through, or various solutions to puzzles (proving you used the hints- because why would you think about that otherwise?).

The game created the inventory management and light puzzle (Damn you!), though you do find a permanent light source eventually. It included ramdomized battles as well, which I don't see much in IF anymore (and it was well implemented). It also includes the dreaded maze puzzle, difficult to map because some guy is stealing and moving your stuff. And then there's that infamous egg puzzle, which had me endlessly confused!

It's a great testament to the game that even some 20 years later I'm still marvelling at the ideas and puzzles they used. The Dam puzzle, the coal basket puzzle, performing the ritual to enter hades, they still amaze me at how well thought out they were. It's easy to think of them and see them in games now, but these guys came up with it from scratch, no one had done this before, and that's why this game may be the most influential game in IF ever.

Please, play it through. Give it a chance. Ignore it's annoyances (they're due to it's age) and learn where it all started.

A canonical puzzle-fest, January 10, 2008

Some modern reviewers have said Zork I is dated, and to some extent it is, although not in the usual way that computer games become dated, which is to say technologically. The technology of IF has improved over the years, certainly, but only incrementally; Zork I is, after all, written on basically the same Z-Machine that a lot of authors are still using today. Sure, parsers have gained a few niceties over the years, but the fact is that even the most sophisticated current parser is still an unnatural computer interface that you have to learn to use; Zork's parser is maybe 10% harder to learn than the current standards. Try digging out a video game from last year, let alone one from Zork's era, and see if they hold up as well.

The thing that makes Zork I look dated isn't the technology; it's the genre. Zork is a story-less treasure hunt in a big cave full of wacky incongruities and anachronisms; it's an unapologetic puzzle-fest; it's a slightly unfair, one-sided contest between a smirking author and a frustrated player. This sort of game went of out style years ago (among IF enthusiasts, I mean - the whole of IF went out of style even earlier among the broader gaming population). Some IFers look at it and say, good riddance: this sort of thing went out of style because it was inferior to what IF has evolved into. I tend to disagree; I think this sort of game actually went out of style because it was done to death, in large part by imitators of this very game. Zork I isn't inferior to modern IF; it's just different from modern IF.

The appeal of Zork I is that of a crossword, or of one of those evil little entangled-wire-loop puzzles. And the thing is, Zork has a ton of that kind of appeal. Once you get into the game, it's really good at doling out just enough positive feedback to keep you going, while keeping the challenges numerous and difficult. Maybe you have to have the right personality type, but if you do, it can become an obsession to beat the thing, to get that last lousy point. The game is unfair, but just a little; its designers had a good feel for just how far they could push their luck before players would feel cheated. It's the kind of game you really want to solve on your own, without looking at hints or walkthroughs, because it always feels like the answers are just within reach.

If you're still convinced that modern IF is just objectively superior to the likes of Zork I, here's something to consider. Modern IF dogma ranks immersiveness as one of the great virtues a work can have. Some look at Zork I's sparse room descriptions and irrational map and scoff. But Zork suggests that there's more to immersion than pretty descriptions. For many IFers, Zork I and its ilk have created some of the most intense subjective feelings of immersion they've had from any sort of game, just because they spent so much time walking back and forth and back and forth across the map. The obsessive play, I think, makes up for the thin text, and then some.

Sic Transit..., January 5, 2008

Some people here give Zork four or even five stars. These must be people who have played Zork many, many years ago, when players' expectations were lower than they are today--because, to be honest, playing Zork today is not a four or five star experience.

The depth of implementation of this game is just horrific: it doesn't know half of the nouns it uses in the room description, and 80% of the objects it does know have no description. Sometimes, it doesn't even seem to know the objects it has allowed me to discover by taking special actions. In the beginning of the game, you can find a grating beneath a pile of leaves; but when you try to examine it, the game tells you that it knows of no 'gratin'. (Maybe that was I was asking you about a fence-like metal structure, not a French culinary invention, in the first place?) Also, you can find a trap door beneath a rug, but when you try to open it, the game tells you that you see no trap door here. Look, you just described it to me! (You can open the trap door by first removing the rug; but the appropriate error message would be something like "the rug is still on it".)

The prose is nothing to write home about either. You are walking around through rooms with names like "north-south passage", and descriptions which are hardly more interesting. There are MANY rooms, but I would rather have had a couple of interesting ones than dozens that are strung together in some non-obvious way.

If there is a story in this game, I have no found it. You start outside a white house, but are given no clue as to who you are or what you are doing here. You appear to get points for collecting treasure, but even so it would have been good to know why I am collecting treasure and what lured me to the white house in the first place.

But if there is no story, there IS an irritating carry limit; there is random death whenever you walk into a dark place; and there is a maze of the most tiresome kind. (At least you get to know where the "twisty little passages" come from.)

Is that were the pain ends? Not at all--so much is irritating about this game that you could go on for quite some time. What about the fact that you cannot abbreviate "examine" to "x"? Or the fact that the descriptions in this game seem to have been written with the express intention no to help the player? If you try to open the door to the white house, you get the message "This door cannot be opened." Well-why on earth not? Has it been boarded? Glued to the frame? Tell me more! If you try to hit the door, you will find that the game asks you to specify something to hit the door with. Supplying the commonsensical answer that you wish to hit it with yourself results in the game telling you that suicide is not the answer. Apparently, then, the player character is made of glass.

But this is my favourite proof that Infocom didn't do any serious beta testing:

> enter river
You hit your head against the river as you attempt this feat.

I started up Zork about 5 or 6 times, but I've never managed to play it for longer than 15 minutes; it is just too irritating. This game must have aged very badly, given that people thought it was good when it came out. I cannot recommend it to anyone who is not filled with nostalgia at the very mention of the word "Infocom".

Zork gets 2 stars for basic technical competence.

Perfectly Balanced, November 6, 2007

Zork I holds a special place in my heart. Although I had played Adventure and enjoyed it, I fell in love with Zork I. Adventure was ultimately frustratingly random and obscure, but Zork I was descriptive, challenging, and intriguing. It kept you hungering to find out just what was around the bend, and what the next puzzle would reveal. If you factor in the state of the technology at its release, when moves would occasionally cause the floppy disk drive to whir, you can get a feel for the fun that playing IF was then. You never knew just what would happen when that disk whirred.

In Zork I, you are an adventurer and the world is your oyster. While the plot may be tired by now, when Zork I was released, this was novel. Blame the following deluge of rip-offs and hacks for the decline of the cave crawl genre, not one of the founding games. Though to be fair, a goodly part of Zork I occurs outside, so the "cave crawl" genre is a rough fit.

The prose is evocative without being excessively detailed and by turns slyly humorous; the puzzles are easy-to-medium in difficulty; the parser is head-and-shoulders above Adventure's, which is to say just a step or two behind modern Inform. Also worth noting is that Zork I encourages you to explore by not introducing movement-blocking puzzles right away. This is a key factor in the sense of immersion.

While Adventure opened the world of IF to many, it was Zork I that made people want to stay. If you have never played this game, play it by all means.

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