Zork I

by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling

Episode 1 of Zork
Zorkian, Cave crawl
1980

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(51)
4 star:
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3 star:
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Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 210
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- oscar-78, December 6, 2018

- Arrowhead (Edmonton, Alberta), September 8, 2018

- ishashobar, September 4, 2018

- Stas, April 14, 2018

- Guenni (At home), February 4, 2018

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Play it, but don't play it first., December 31, 2017
by lastplaneout (Boone, NC)

It almost goes without saying that the original Zork trilogy is a must-play for most interactive fictions enthusiasts. As someone who is relatively new to the medium/genre, it was gratifying to play through the first part of the trilogy (and then the sequels) after I had experienced some more recent works first. This set me up to have a whole bunch of "Oh, this is where that came from" moments as I played through Zork's underground that would have been lost on me otherwise. The narrative style of the game works really well for me when paired with a sense of vague familiarity.

The modular structure and dubious geometry of the underground may not earn the game points for realism, but I enjoyed mapping the maze-y areas with Trizbort while playing. There was also never a sense of "What do I do next?" at any point, I think due to the clear association of specific rooms with specific puzzles and functions. The puzzles themselves were hard as hell, but gratifying to complete.

While the game is obviously littered with ideas that become genre tropes and conventions later on, there are also some things that I am glad didn't stick. For instance, I never would have completed the meta-parser puzzles (e.g. (Spoiler - click to show)the cyclops and echo puzzles) without using a walkthrough. The (Spoiler - click to show)sceptre puzzle was also maddening, seemingly requiring knowledge of previous games and/or a willingness to brute-force every possible command into the parser.

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- Naeemah, December 23, 2017

- stet, November 22, 2017

- beriaearwen, October 10, 2017

- jamesb (San Antonio, Texas), July 12, 2017

- Arkaedi, July 7, 2017

- nosferatu, June 29, 2017

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Heaven in text form, April 24, 2017
by H. W. Wiliams (Sweden)

One of the finest IF games I've ever played. I remember sitting at my old computer for hours just mapping out this game. If you like massive adventures, then this one's for you.

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- ifMUD_Olly (Montana, USA), April 21, 2017

- TheAncientOne, March 25, 2017

- Spike, February 26, 2017

- Greg Frost (Seattle, Washington), February 11, 2017

- Christopher Hall (London, Great Britain), January 27, 2017

- EngineerWolf (India), December 18, 2016

- SciFinn (Alberta, Canada), December 14, 2016

- Xavid, December 7, 2016

- NinaS, July 3, 2016

- Teaspoon, April 11, 2016

- Matt Bates, March 28, 2016

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
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.

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