Zork is an interactive fiction computer game. It was originally developed by four members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group — Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling — between 1977 and 1979 for the DEC PDP-10 mainframe computer. The four founded the company Infocom in 1979 and released Zork as a commercial game for personal computers, split due to memory limits of personal computers compared to the mainframe system. The three titles released commercially were Zork: The Great Underground Empire – Part I in 1980 (later known as Zork I), Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz in 1981, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master in 1982. The game has since been ported to numerous systems.
Zork was directly inspired by the first text adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure, written in 1975. Zork distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit troll"), but recognized some prepositions and conjunctions ("hit the troll with the Elvish sword").
AmigaAmstrad CPCAmstrad PCWApple IIAtari 8-bitAtari STCP/MCommodore 64Plus/4DOSIBM PCMSXMacintoshNEC PC-9801PDP-10PDP-11PlayStationSaturnTI-99/4ATRS-80
1977 (PDP-10), 1980 (Zork I), 1981 (Zork II), 1982 (Zork III),
Text adventure, Single-player.
Zork is set in "the ruins of an ancient empire lying far underground". The player is a nameless adventurer "who is venturing into this dangerous land in search of wealth and adventure". The goal is to return from exploring the "Great Underground Empire" (GUE, for short) alive and with all treasures needed to complete each adventure, ultimately inheriting the title of Dungeon Master. The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures, objects, and locations, among them the ferocious but light-fearing grues, zorkmids (the GUE's currency), and Flood Control Dam #3—all of which are referenced by subsequent Infocom text adventures.
FrobozzCo International is a fictional monopolistic conglomerate from the game.[6] FrobozzCo products are littered throughout all Zork games, often to humorous effect.
Several treasures and locations in Zork reveal that there used to be a large aristocratic family called the Flatheads, who reigned supreme over the GUE. There were twelve rulers from this family, one of whom, King Mumberthrax the Insignificant, had twelve sons of his own, who are referenced in the book The Lives of the Twelve Flatheads. With the exception of his first son and successor, Lord Dimwit Flathead, Mumberthrax's children are named after historical figures. For example, in Zork II, one treasure is a portrait of "J. Pierpont Flathead".
In each game, there are several light sources the player can pick up and use, among them a battery-powered brass lantern and a pair of candles, which both have a limited lifespan, as well as a torch that never expires. The player must be carrying at least one light source at all times when exploring the dark areas of the games, or else, if they continue navigating through the dark, the player will be caught and devoured by a carnivorous grue, ending the adventure in defeat. The exception to this rule occurs when the player must use a spray can of grue repellent to navigate dark areas where a light source cannot be brought.
The original MIT version of Zork (also called Dungeon) combines plot elements from all three of the following games, which were made available for commercial sale.
The Great Underground Empire Main article: Zork I § Gameplay The game takes place in the Zork calendar year 948 GUE (although the passage of time is not notable in gameplay). The player steps into the deliberately vague role of an "adventurer". The game begins near a white house in a small, self-contained area. Although the player is given little instruction, the house provides an obvious point of interest.
The Wizard of Frobozz Main article: Zork II § Plot The player begins in the Barrow from Zork I armed only with the trusty brass lantern and the elvish sword of great antiquity from before. The objective of the game is not initially clear, but the player is pursued throughout by the titular wizard.
The Dungeon Master Main article: Zork III § Plot The player begins at the bottom of the Endless Stair from Zork II.
Zork III is somewhat less of a straightforward treasure hunt than previous installments. Instead, the player—in the role of the same "adventurer" played in Zork I and Zork II—must demonstrate worthiness to assume the role of the Dungeon Master.
Happily borrowed the above text from wiki mama.
In the Zork games, the player is not limited to verb-noun commands, such as "take lamp", "open mailbox", and so forth. Instead, the parser supports more sophisticated sentences such as "put the lamp and sword in the case", "look under the rug", and "drop all except lantern" .The game understands many common verbs, including "take", "drop", "examine", "attack", "climb", "open", "close", "count", and many more. The games also support commands to the game directly (rather than taking actions within the fictional setting of the game) such as "save" and "restore", "script" and "unscript" (which begin and end a text transcript of the game text), "restart", and "quit".
You could modify the amount of information displayed on screen, in each room, and subsequent return to the same room, by commands "brief," "superbrief" and "verbose." "brief" would give a moderate room or item description on the initial visit, and a bare minimum on subsequent visits, "Superbrief" would only give a room title for each and every visit, while "verbose" would supply "Maximum Verbosity" by giving all available information in each room, or item thereof, or revisit thereafter.