Zork

Game review

Zork is one of the revolutionary pieces in the text adventure genre, the first part of a trilogy and the first from Infocom (known as the king of text games). Like a classic text machine, commands written on the keyboard are controlled, and what is happening on the screen is written out in text (after entering the look command). For example, you go to the west with the command "west" (if the game allows it). Zork looks like a game from the present at the beginning, you start in the forest near a white building. But soon the player finds himself in an underground world full of fantasy creatures, traps and mazes.

Zork (sometimes also Dungeon) was a game heavily inspired by Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure from 1975-1976. When its developers decided to establish Infocom, they divided Zork into three parts for both sales and technical reasons, with each part receiving further improvements. Although some aspects of this first installment lack the originality and certain authenticity of Adventure, 1980's Zork I feels more professional and polished. Logical puzzles are a big plus, because in Adventure there are a few that can be solved more by the method of everything for everything.

Even in Zork, you can easily miss something, despite the fact that most objects lack labels when using the look command, so there is not so much text (and thus interactive places). Sometimes, however, some puzzles are constructed in such a way that the game deliberately does not provide you with some information, so that the solution does give logic, but it is a little bit tricky (for example, an inflatable boat, an emerald in a buoy, a diamond machine). However, the parser is excellent and you don't have to worry about fumbling because you can't guess an expression.

What I regretted is the untapped potential of the Zork world. In the manual, you will find the history of the obscure kingdom of Quendor, House Flathead, and how the Great Underground Empire came to be and how excessive bureaucracy caused its decline, but you will rarely come across this while playing. Most of the time you are dealing with themes taken from common fantasy or mythology. It's still, just like in Adventure, basically gibberish.

The story is completely missing, it's just about collecting a certain amount of treasures, the conclusion is cut off because of the connected parts, and since the game does not contain a plot and plot, the connection between the individual parts is very loose. But that doesn't change the fact that immersing yourself in Zork, wrestling with a thief, a dwindling world, searching for hidden treasures in an abandoned forgotten realm and pondering how to operate a dam or reach the underworld is still fun today, its mapping has its own forgotten magic and that the text adventure genre is grossly underrated!