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Just ASCII +
A Column Covering Interactive Fiction and Other Nongraphical Adventure
Games
Adventurer vs. Red Dragon
by Simon de Vet
(click to enlarge)
By Erik Reckase
Part Four: Zork I, II, III Reviews
When I was twelve years old, Zork II taught me how to type. There's no question about it--prior to playing that game, I was a hunt-and-peck typist, laboring at the keyboard to type the simplest of words. Now, I'm not saying that it taught me the right way to type, but I learned how to type fast enough to keep myself focused on what I was working on rather than staring at the keyboard. To this day, I don't use the two minor fingers on either hand, but I easily type faster than many of my coworkers with classical training.
Looking at the big picture, however, Zork II (and all of the other Infocom text adventure games) gave my brain its first taste of problem solving and critical thinking. Sure, I was in junior high school, and therefore was too young to figure out some of the really tough puzzles, but the rush I got from solving just one of them was enough to secure my fate as a nerd. Now that I'm rapidly approaching 30, I've been spending time reflecting on my life, with the following conclusion: finding new and creative methods of satisfying that addiction has been my most important driving force. It's probably the reason I got a degree in mathematics, as the excitement attained in solving a math problem was very similar to mapping and surpassing a tough text adventure maze (in my warped mind, at least.)
I am forever thankful that I stumbled upon these games when I did. I started playing text adventure games in 1983, when I received my trusty Commodore 64 as a gift from my parents. It was only a few years earlier, in 1977, that an infamous group of MIT students, including Marc Blank and David Lebling, spent their spare time writing a better Adventure game. (The original Adventure had been released earlier that year, and among other problems, had severe interpreter limitations.) The name Zork was used as an interim name for the program during development and was never intended to be the permanent title for the series. Originally a single game, it was split into three separate pieces due to memory considerations on personal computers at that time. Until writing this article, I was unaware of this fact, and it made the three games fit together much more cohesively. (I won't go into the complete history here, but if you're interested, there's a link below that will provide the whole story.) I recently replayed the first three Zork games, and here's my thoughts on these classics of early computer gaming.
Zork
I
This first game in the Zork series is a certifiable classic. It
is the largest of the three adventures and contains puzzles from all points
of the compass. Your goal: to find twenty treasures and store them safely
in the trophy case in the main room of the white house. For maze lovers
(I know there aren't many of them, but they're out there), there are two
fairly complex mazes requiring careful object management. There's a sneaky
thief, tracking you down and stealing your valuables. In fact, there's
a puzzle for just about every occasion in this game, ranging from the
fairly simple (Flood Control Dam #3 comes to mind), to the notoriously
difficult (getting into the gates of Hades). The descriptions of the various
locations in Zork I are well-written, but they seem a bit hollow
to me--but I'm comparing it to the other two games, so of course it's
going to be a little bit below par. Clues to the hardest of the puzzles
are not too difficult to find and interpret, so this game is solvable
by explorative youngsters as well as seasoned adult gamers.
Zork
II
This is my favorite of the three games. Slightly smaller than the first
game, Zork II holds many wonderful memories for me. This was the
first Infocom game that I played at great length--I would sit captivated
for hours in front of my old computer, listening to the radio and exploring
the underground. To this day, there are songs by the Eurythmics and Heart
that take me back to critical discoveries that I made, simply because
they were playing at the instant that insight occurred. The descriptions
of the locations and objects in Zork II are superior to those in
Zork I. The puzzles are also of higher quality, although they are
also significantly harder than the previous game's puzzles as well. The
volcano puzzle is a classic, and the fantastic "get the key from
the other side of the door" puzzle was one of the first ones that
I solved seventeen years ago. There are frustrating parts of the game
as well--I am convinced that the oddly angled "maze" cannot
be solved by a mere mortal without hints. The bank puzzle is also fairly
confusing and nonintuitive (until you solve it, of course.) Still, I highly
recommend this pinnacle of interactive fiction, and I hope that all readers
will try out this gem.
Zork
III
The smallest of the series, Zork III wraps up the story with a
confrontation with the Dungeon Master himself. The scoring system in this
game is different than the first two--while the earlier games scored points
for just about all critical puzzle solutions, this game has only seven
total points, and while you may score all of the points, you still might
not be able to finish the game. No doubt about it--this is a tough game.
There aren't many puzzles in this game, although there are two enduring
classics written into this final chapter, namely the wooden box puzzle
(which takes an entire screen to fully describe) and the sliding sandstone
block maze. Creatively described in the game with text characters, this
is probably the first moving block puzzle, which spawned countless imitators,
even in this graphically enhanced age. (Lara Croft owes a lot to this
game!) Playing Zork III a second time, fifteen years after my first
experience, I was surprised by the shortness of the game and was a little
disappointed by the game's conclusion. Zork III is still a great
endpoint for the multi-game exploration of the underground, and it should
definitely be played, if just for the sake of being completist.
As I mentioned in a previous column, all three of these classics of interactive fiction are now downloadable for free as part of the publicity surrounding the release of Zork: Grand Inquisitor. I've included links to these games, as well as some other useful information, below. All of these links are to the great Infocom memorial page, maintained by Peter Scheyen. Next time, I'll be covering one of the current reigning champions of the Rogue-like arena, Ancient Domains of Mystery. Enjoy!
The History of Zork: Written by Tim Anderson (one of the original writers) and Stu Galley, this page documents the development of the Zork games from beginning to end.
Zork I, II, III Downloads: The three original Zork adventures, as well as a recently released new adventure (The Undiscovered Underground) can be downloaded from this page.
InvisiClues: Available in the 1980s, InvisiClues were books of hints for Infocom adventures that were printed using invisible ink (similar to the old lemon juice and candle trick, but a little bit safer). By using the special pen provided, you could get incrementally more helpful hints for all of the puzzles in the games! This actually works better in HTML format, as you avoid the temptation to flip through the book, inadvertently spoiling a surprise that will come later in the game. Highly recommended.