#0020 Zork I

And the award for the nerdiest sounding title for a game goes too... Zork! Which sounds like a combination of “Zordon” and “dork” and is a text adventure created by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels and Dave Lebling, and published by Infocom.

No this isn't my screenshot either, but it's how the game always starts.

I know what you're asking yourself right now, hey Ultimate-Gamer, weren't Eamon, M.U.D. and Rogue all based on and inspired by this game? Why yes reader, that is true, and while the game was technically released in 1977, the game we're playing today is the PC port that came out in 1980, this version took the original game Zork, and split it into three separate games that, individually, could be run on the PCs of the day. Thus, today's game is Zork I, the first of that trilogy of games that came out for the Apple II, the Commodore 64 among others.

Zork is a text adventure where you're placed in the vague role of “Adventurer” and places you in front of a white house with no real instruction. Turns out this white house is right on top of the last entrance to the Great Underground Empire. Your goal is to collect treasures from this underground dungeon and place them in the trophy case in the house. You do this by navigating the dungeon, fighting monsters and solving the puzzles that present themselves to you.

Game shines not because of its gameplay, because let's face it, from a gameplay standpoint, if you've played one text adventure you've played them all. Or even it's story. The game shines because of the sense of adventure and attention to detail that these creators so lovingly packed into this game!

For starters the only NPC in this game is a thief with a stiletto who steals your belongings and tries to kill you if you follow him. On paper a thief who goes around and hinders your quest sounds like a pain in the ass, but I actually had quite a bit of fun with him. After I got tired of him stealing all my treasures, I decided I'd go and corner him and MAKE him give me my stuff. He bowed to me and brandished his stiletto and we began duking it out and it turned out to be the only fight in the game that actually posed a challenge. Once he was dead and I got my stuff back I realized that he had opened the golden egg he stole from me. I was not able to open it on my own. That's really cool to have a character like that who actually has an effect on the game.

See another thing I like about Zork are the complexity of the puzzles. The entire game's challenge is based around them. You adventure through this big underground empire picking up little trinkets in order to solve them. Being a fan of puzzle based adventures myself after I got used to the format and had a good map going I realized just how much fun I was having with it. Going from puzzle to puzzle seeing which one I could solve. Like, maybe if I rang this little bell in the “loud room” maybe it'll have an effect. It's a very rewarding experience when try something and get a new message indicating that it worked! Even better when you receive a treasure for it. But even though the puzzles were fun and challenging, they're still not my favorite part of the game. My favorite part is actually a very small part of the game, but it's always there... Always waiting...

There are only a few monsters in the game proper. A troll, which dies very easily, a cyclops who is indestructible unless you solve the puzzle surrounding him. And my most favorite monster, the Grue. The grue is a monster that lurks in darkness and fears the light. This thing follows you, without you even knowing it. Constantly stalking you, waiting for your lanterns battery to extinguish and as soon as you're in pitch blackness it strikes, killing you instantly. So you can imagine my terror when I first went down that trap door not realizing that I left the lantern in the trophy case. I heard the trap door close and someone locking it from the outside along with the message.

“It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”

Oh shit.

I didn't take two steps before something before something slithered into the room and devoured me.

Wow game. Way to play at my nerves. It was honestly a pretty creepy experience, to realize that you're in deep and there's nothing you can do but wait to be devoured in the darkness. So this marks the first time in video game history that a game actually managed to creep me out. 1980, Zork I. Speaking of being creeped out, does this game's setup seem familiar to anyone?

That's right! Anyone who's played Silent Hill, or Amnesia, or any survival horror game will feel right at home with this game. I don't mean that this game is a survival horror game, or is even scary. It's not, the grue may be the exception, but the game still has an overwhelming sense of humor and never takes itself too seriously. No, the familiarity comes from the way that you collect items from different rooms in order to solve puzzles that keep you from progress. Usually multiple puzzles are offered to you at the same time. You'll be going along and find a grate under a pile of leaves that cannot be opened. You continue anyway, keeping the grating in your mind as you progress through the game until you find a dead person with a key around his neck and remember “Oh! This must go to that grate I found earlier”. See the connection? I just find it amazing just how far back that style of gameplay actually goes. And here I thought it started with computer adventure games in the 90's.

Overall, this game was a lot of fun. Maybe even better than Eamon. It was the first game where after an hour of gameplay, not only did I not feel like I completed everything, but that I had only barely scratched the surface of what this game was all about. I am very tempted to go back and actually finish the game properly and you should to! The game is vaporware, meaning that the company that owned it is now out of business and Zork is now Public domain. Download the entire trilogy here and give the precursor to everything from computer RPGs to survival horror games a shot!

Before I wrap this up, I just wanted to comment on something I noticed. Right now there's a big split between console gamers, and PC gamers. Little did I know going into this challenge just how far back the split went. Ever since Pong made playing video games easy and accessible to everyone we had a split between people who played more cerebral and intellectual games on PCs and people who played reflex testing shoot 'em ups in the arcades, and then later on video game consoles. While neither one is bad, it's just interesting just how gaming culture can be so vastly different just because of the type of devise we play them on. Even to this day the debate continues on whether PC gaming or Console gaming is superior, though, nowadays, the difference is less jarring as most PC games are ported to Consoles and vise versa. Personally, while I grew up a full fledged Nintendo console gamer, now I belie that PCs offer more variety as well as more options, but consoles will always have a place in my heart... Especially since smash bros 4 is coming out soon.

Next up: Warlords (I'm not sure how I'm going to pull this one off...)