Zork! An Overview

David P. Stone

BASIC INFORMATION

NAME:	Zork I, Zork II and Zork III
TYPE:	Adventures
SYSTEM:	Many
FORMAT:	Disk
# PLAYERS:	One
AUTHORS:	M. Blanc, T. Anderson, D. Lebling, B. Daniels
PRICE:	$39.95ea
PUBLISHER:	INFOCOM

The Zork trilogy is a series of three enjoyable, exciting-to-experience, text-oriented adventures. Unfortunately, describing an adventure, without revealing clues, is like trying to describe a treasure chest without saying exactly what's in it. You'll just have to believe me, Zork is filled with many valuable jewels, and forgive me if I inadvertently slip you a clue to solving one of its many, many mysteries.

In ZORK I, The Great Underground Empire, you begin your adventure west of a great white house. From there you must explore and gain entrance to the underground empire. Points are gained by finding the twenty treasures and putting them into the trophy case. But, as you might expect, the treasures are not easily found, First, riddles must be answered, puzzles solved, and hazards (such as an axe wielding troll) overcome.

The most common hazards are the grues. Grues are carnivorous cave creatures that make meals of adventurers when the lights go out. Also, Zork I is inhabited by a thief who is apt to pick a fight, pick your pockets, or both.

In ZORK II, The Wizard of Frobozz, you begin in a Stone Barrow, already within the underground realm. You earn adventuring points by discovering treasures and by accomplishing difficult feats. As in Zork I, this usually means using the right objects in the right room in the right sequence. The consequence of failing to do so is death or frustration, or both. Zork II is inhabited by a prankster wizard who is obsessed with hexing you with spells that begin with the letter "F". Unlike the thief in Zork I, the wizard is more of a nuisance than an adversary.

In ZORK III, The Dungeon Master, your goals are to discover treasures and solve puzzles such as how to successfully operate the machinery in the technology room. The documentation for Zork III states that "...your quest hinges upon discovering the secret purpose of the Dungeon Master who will oversee your ultimate triumph — or destruction — in the realm of Zork." These words have left this adventurer truly puzzled. I achieved the total potential score (seven out of seven), yet I did nothing to make that game description make sense. So, there may be even more to Zork III than I've discovered.

Each adventure in the trilogy is different (and sold separately, by the way), yet each retains the same feel and flavor — like visiting three different towns in the same foreign country. Each adventure occurs at a definite point in time in the history of Zork. The adventures are pretty much independent, although I would recommend experiencing them in sequence.

The original Zork was developed over five years ago on a DEC System-10, inspired by the Crowthers and Woods original adventure: Colossal Cave. Zork I and II are based directly on the original Zork (with only a few changes and a few new predicaments). Zork III is, as far as I can tell, entirely new. More details on the history of the program's development can be found in these articles by the game's authors: "IEEEE Computer", April 1979, and "byte", December 1980. (Good reading if you're into adventure software design.)

Many features, besides its longevity and years of play-testing, come together to make Zork great. However, the one feature that makes it truly superior is its user friendliness. Most of the user friendliness can be attributed directly to the parser. A parser is the portion of an adventure computer program that analyzes your input and, if well done, responds appropriately. What this means to the adventurer, is that Zork allows you to enter commands not only as complete sentences, but as very complex complete sentences. For example:

TELL THE ROBOT "PUSH THE TRIANGULAR AND THE SQUARE BUTTON."

In other adventures, I sometimes knew what I wanted to do, but had to experiment with different combinations of two word (verb/subject) input to overcome the program's limitations. Not so with Zork. Virtually every one of my commands was understood.

To add to its adventurer-friendliness, Zork tries harder than any other adventure I've ever seen to do what is commanded. Consider this exchange (Zork's replies are in parenthesis):

OPEN THE DOOR

    (Which door do you mean?)

TRAP

    (Done.)

Notice that Zork discriminates between like objects (in this case, different doors) in the same location, and a single word of input is all it takes to get you going again.

If Zork makes an assumption about your command, it lets you know:

OFFER WATER

    (To the Troll)

Adventuring is further facilitated by Zork's ability to recognize abbreviations and to accept multiple commands by recognizing commas, conjunctions (such as "and" and "but"), and periods. So, this command is valid:

N.NE.SE.DROP ALL BUT LAMP

ZORK recognizes the above abbreviations (for compass directions) and carries out your command. You can even ask "WHERE" and "WHAT" questions!

WHERE IS THE LAMP

    (You are carrying it.)

Even though the Zork parser is state of the art, its not definitive. Due to space limitations, Zork sometimes does not recognize words that it uses in its colorful, detailed room descriptions. This is true despite the fact it does recognize over 600 nouns and 100 verbs.

As I mentioned above, Zork is all text—that means no graphics. None are needed. The authors have not skimped on the vividly detailed descriptions of each location; descriptions to which not even Atari graphics could do complete justice. For example:

SOUTH

Great Cavern This is the center of the great cavern. A great room of flowing color has been carved out of the limestone. Stalactites and stalagmites of many sizes are everywhere. The room glows with dim light provided by phosphorescent moss, and weird shadows move all around you. A narrow path winds among the stalagmites. There are many little trails leading in here and there, but a good one leads southwest toward the edge of the room, and another leads northwest.

These eloquent descriptions give their readers a real sense of the place. However, they are more than just flowery verbiage that takes up disk space. Often, clues to solving the mysteries of Zork are cleverly embedded in the prose.

Zork is like most other adventures in that it consists of many episodic plots (one episode, for example, being to acquire a particular treasure). You must do the routine things that all adventurers do: fight foes, explore room, find objects, and piece them together to solve puzzles that yield treasures (or points). As always, objects are seldom useful in the same room in which they are found (for example, don't count on finding a locked chest and a key that fits in the same room.) Usually the obstacles or riddles can be solved by logic or common-sense (like finding keys to doors). Occasionally, they are not-so-logical (like rubbing things not ordinarily rubbed).

The mechanics of testing your hypotheses about how to use objects or get past obstacles is nicely done. For starter, the Zork screen display is straight-forward. The text scrolls up (and off) and the top line displays your status: location ( by room name), score, and number of turns taken. You always know where to look — either at the very top or the very bottom of the screen.

There are a host of special one word commands to simplify and facilitate your adventuring (would-be adventure software designers take note). For getting into and out of the adventure there's QUIT, RESTART, RESTORE, AND SAVE (with up to five different saves). For controlling the amount of detail given in room descriptions there's BRIEF, SUPERBRIEF, AND VERBOSE. And, for making a printed transcript of your adventure there's SCRIPT and UNSCRIPT to turn a printer control on and off.

Even the running problem of every adventurer — getting killed —is handled with finesse. Instead of forcing you to start over at square one (perhaps with a re-boot), Zork, in most cases, scatters your possessions and reincarnates you near where you began the adventure.

So that I don't lose my reviewer's license, or my credibility, I guess I should mention a few of Zork's shortcomings. The trouble is that for a game of its type Zork has no serious flaws. If Zork does have a flaw, it is that the empire is, perhaps, a bit too fanciful — it lacks an internally consistent theme. For example, Zork I contains, among other things, an Egyptian Tomb room, a troll room, a Flood Control Dam with electrical power, and the Gates of Hades. Don't get me wrong, these places are exciting to discover, explore, and relieve of their treasures; but what are they doing in the same world? Of course, not all adventurers would agree with me that "organic unity" is important, or even relevant.

There is one other feature of Zork that I almost considered a flaw, but am now not so sure. Unlike a well-made play, or a well-written short story, in which all pieces must move the plot forward or contribute to the whole, Zork has a few, but just a few, puzzles that either don't have solutions or that don't need to be solved to reach the adventure's conclusion successfully. I can't decide whether these puzzles are supposed to be red-herrings or cliff hangers.

Zork is currently available on several computers, which explains, in part, the existence of an organization called the Zork User's Group (Z.U.G.): an independent company licensed by Infocom. Z.U.G. provides (sells) such paraphernalia as clue booklets, guidemaps, a full color poster of Zork I (to commemorate your visit) and even souvenir buttons. Z.U.G. gives (and I repeat) a special caution, that their guidemaps reveal locations and items that an adventurer may want to discover for himself. With that in mind, P didn't look at my Zork I guidemap until I was confident I had fully mapped out everything. I must admit I took special delight in comparing the accuracy of my map (consisting of several sheets of yellowed paper, Scotch-taped together) with the official one (nicely drawn and printed, of course).

Zork is vast and intricate. I counted over 100 interconnecting rooms in Zork I alone. This means that map making is imperative. Examine everything. Remember that, especially in mazes, there are ten different directions (eight compass directions, plus up and down). Also, don't hesitate to re-explore old paths. Occasionally, new passages open up as you solve mysteries, or as events outside your control (like earthquakes) occur. Finally, even though Zork is a singleplayer adventure, don't go there alone if you can help it. It is definitely an adventure to be shared and enjoyed.

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