Let's play Zork

Recently I saw a rerun of The Big Bang Theory on TV. It was quite refreshing since I don't rewatch any series, with the only exception being Black Books. One of the aired episodes that day was the one where Sheldon mentions playing a buggy beta version of Zork[*]. Suddenly, I remembered that I wanted to try out this old text adventure since I watched the episode back in 2010 or so. I considered it super weird then to play videogames without the... well, video part. But I played many tabletop RPGs since, so I am now well aware of using imagination as a game mechanic. And I've seen Zork appear many times on online forums and even in Call of Duty Black ops which I played on Xbox360. So I assume this rerun was the last straw and the "call to adventure" I was waiting for. Let's start with preparation for the descent.

Firstly, we will need to obtain the game and the manual might also come handy. (If you already have ZORK I, you can jump here.) For enjoyers of adavnced LISP, I include source code for the Infocom version, MIT release as well as the mainframe versions. And in order to actually use game files, we will need package frotz.

Anyway, we will use frotz interpreter to run the game files. Don't forget to use the full path to the directory where you downloaded or moved the game files. A Games directory at the home might be a good idea.

This script can come in handy as different builds have different bugs and command responses. The first two versions (r2 and r5) will teleport player to a random location when a nonsense travel command is given, like GO WALL or GO TREE. In all versions except for solid gold (r52) you can pour water from the bottle even if the bottle isn't open. And every version suffers from EXAMINE OVERBOARD problem. You can check the full list of differences in Infobugs and Microheavens zork sections. Exploiting those older buggy versions sounds fun and I, as a real adventurer, picked up release r15 the "Hack of 15.UG3AU5" version.

The game itself is pretty straight forward. Our adventure takes place circa 300 years after the fall of the Greatest Underground Empire, and we take the role of nameless adventurer seeking fame and fortune in the ruins of the once unmatched empire. The manual explains that the game is played by typing commands and awaiting the response from the game. It is basically a Read Eval Print Loop with a complex parser and a score system. And just like any REPL, Zork counts your lines - in this case, commands or actions. The goal is to retrieve treasures and put them into the trophy case with the least actions possible. The more we return, more we score. The manual gives no information on how many treasuers are out there or if we lose when we waste too many turns. However, it mentions five times to draw a map as we play, so I will.

I found a canyon to the east of the house, so I went there. I arrived at the canyon view and continued to the west through the forest. I stopped next to the big tree with suspiciously looking lower branches. This is a hint. After climbing the tree, I found a bird's nest with a jewel-encrusted egg. What a luck! I grab it and run with it to the trophy case before it's rightful owner comes for it. (I have a feeling that it is not the bird.) On my way back I got lost a little in the forest, but somehow I appeared in the clearing behind the house. Jumped through the kitchen window, spent some time (turns) trying to put the egg jewel into the trophy case and... Success! First treasure collected, 10 score earned, totaling on 20 right now.

So far so good. The forest on the east had a few more roads to go, but I am not sure if I got lost because of some glitch or if the forest was too thick. Either way, I exit the house and march to the west this time. One hundred moves later... Dead end, just like the canyon on the east and forests on the north and south. I am going back to house to regroup and look for more clues. After further examination of the house, I see only a chimney in the kitchen and a rug in the living room. I bet on a rug as it nicely ties the room together. "With the rug moved, the dusty cover of a closed trap-door appears." I hastily open the trap-door and descent into the darkness. The score jumped to 25 points.

With someone's help, the trap door closes above my head. I am in a dark cellar and the ancient sword starts to glow a little. Tension rises. As I put my foot in the room to the north, a nasty-looking troll blocking my way out. First enemy encounter. The troll seems to be wielding an axe and my sword glows very brightly now. I charge the troll, but he nimbly jumps away and reaches me with his ax. The game responds with Ouch! so I assume it is just a flesh wound...

Never mind I restore the game, enter the room again and after a long fight troll dies with another swing of my blade. As soon as he breathes his last breath, his body disappears in sinister black fog and my sword is no longer glowing. My score is 45 now, but as I try to lift his blody axe, I realize my inventory is full. I'll stick with the sword.

As I look around, I see labyrinth to the west and a long passage to the east. I try to circle the cellar I came from, which leads me to the Mirror room. In it, there is only a mirror which seems to be responding to touch but nothing else. Two other exits from the room lead to the same cave, making it the dead end with the only way down into the cave. But as I try to leave the mirror room I realize that this is not the same passage I came in... It took me a lot of reloads (restores) to realize that the mirror is a portal to another mirror room.

I am redrawing my map and teleporting back to the first mirror room, which I mark with a letter "A" now. The map is starting to look very complicated, and it's much bigger than I expected. I have the temptation to draw it in some visual tool on PC but for now I am staying OG with pencil. I haven't found anything of value so far and I am afraid to go on this new mirror branch so soon.

I return back to the first room, cellar, and try to focus on going another direction than east as it, too holds many rooms. I go south and enter the gallery. A loot at last. But then, out of nowhere I spot somebody in the room with me. He says nothing, but holds a bag. At this point I have no idea what to do. I am not sure if I can say something (in this game) but I just don't want to attack someone who is not hostile to me. I am reaching for the manual. There is mention of both say and tell keywords on page 19, but the game doesn't recognize them somehow. This might be a trait of my buggy build. Nevermind, I try waving. Not working. I will wave my glowing sword, showing I am armed and dangerous. Nothing. As a somewhat veteran of D&D I will try one last effort to stay civilized - wait.

I restored from the last save point in the circle room and run straight to the gallery. I enter the room with sword in my hand, but the room is empty(?). I will spare you of my hundreds of reloads but it works like this. The thief shows up whenever you pick up or come to something worth points. He will take it whether it is in a room or on you. You can fight him but I was out of luck. I tried knife, but that was doing no damage at all, sword performed best but he was always quicker than me and troll's ax hit him too, but after first hit he stole my stuff and left. Command follow thief doesn't work - boy I hate him. But I was able to "bug him out" by taking the painting, saving and restoring the just saved game. He didn't come back.

But still, my inventory is getting full, and I will have to carry things out to the trophy case. So the new plan is to look for a way out and then try to scavenge for other valuables. And nothing screams more "way out" than a maze. I go back to the cellar (again), this time with painting and enter the maze to the west. I will mark down all of my moves on separate sheet of paper and drop items to be my breadcrumbs. And I will save often, just in case the old friend shows up.

I managed to navigate myself to the treasure inside the maze. It is the skeleton key and the bag of coins. Score is 64. I do know my way back, but I need to get out another way, hopefully leading me to the house again. I managed to navigate to the room with evil cyclops. I must say that the whole maze solving took me about 1,5 hours of which I had to deal with thief at least 10 times. I am more than ready to kill the beast standing before me or die trying. I charge the monster and after a tough one-sided battle...

Ok. New plan. Don't leave the sandwich in the maze and let's try to bribe the cyclops with it. At this point, I knew how to solve the maze from the top of my head. I face the beast again, this time without the sword, holding only a small sub with peppers. He likes my proposition and takes my bottle with water too. The beast falls asleep after a good lunch. I tried to look around the room and I saw stairs up, but as soon as I enter the treasure room on the upper floor... the thief, again. I am carrying the painting, the bag of coins and just in front of our eyes, there is a beautiful silver chalice.The score is 79 and it is time to play his own game.

I gave him my sword. He is stunned by this gesture and examines the weapon. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I sneak behind him and struck him dead with knife from the attic. Well, it was like three attacks but nevertheless RETRIBUTION! With the thief dead, I take my sword back and drop the knife as insturment of a cold murder. Then there is the silver chalice lying on the ground, but I am unable to take it as the inventory is full. I want to drop the garlic, but I am not sure if this underground is vampire-free, so I will stick with the garlic and I drop the rope. I am sure I won't regret it later... The score is just one point short of 100.

Sadly, no exit from the treasure room and cyclops room is also a dead end. My patience is slowly fading away and I access the World Wide Web for hints. I found a pretty nice map which told me that there was another way out of the maze. It's the cryptic grating room from clearing next to the house! I close the map and rush to it. But yeah, the grating is locked and I left the skeleton key inside the maze... Went back for the key, emerged on the surface and delivered the treasures back to the living room in 2 rounds because of a small inventory. Score is sitting way up on 115.

And right now, I am considering ending this adventure as the score is above 100 and my lust for retro gaming has been somewhat satisfied. I typed score to see that I reached the rank of Junior Adventurer, which is 4th rank out of 8. As much as I want to say that it was fun, I feel tricked into playing a puzzle game with very little adventure in it. The lack of usefull information and overall "story" puts this game on the same level as some rogue-likes. It is good but not something I can see falling into. At least not now. If you consider playing it, here are my key takeaways from this short gameplay:

• get lamp
• drawing a map is neccessity
• downloading the map when stuck is not a shame
• drop items in maze to find your way out
• use up, down, SE, SW, NE, NW directions (in maze) too
• thief is son of a bitch, play dirty because he will