WELCOME TO ZORK ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortal man. Hardened adventurers have run screaming from the terrors contained within! In ZORK the intrepid explorer delves into the forgotten secrets of a lost labyrinth deep in [...]

Huzzah! and so forth: YOU MARCH THROUGH THE HOLE AND FIND YOURSELF IN THE MAIN OFFICE, WHERE A CHEERING BAND OF FRIENDLY ELVES CARRY THE CONQUERING ADVENTURER OFF INTO THE SUNSET. It was easier to finish than I expected. I’m not sure if I’m better at these things now or if my success is attributable [...]

The twisty maze of passages, all alike: So, so much better. (See previous installment: Worst Maze Ever.) It was clear early on there was some sensible geography going on with bottlenecks and specific sections. Being forced to drop items like a breadcrumb trail is much more interesting than squinting at the difference between “twisting” and [...]

I’ve already brought it up on a comment thread here and elsewhere, so I might as well make an official link: Download for Renga in Four Parts It is in Hugo (any multi-format interpreter like Gargoyle also ought to work). This is not a “demo” — it is as long as it is going to [...]

I thrashed around in that maze awhile longer. Finally, Alsing said, “Look carefully at the messages on the screen.” “They’re all the same.” “No, They’re not.” Each chamber of this maze within the big labyrinth had a slightly different and unique address, formed by a particular arrangement of the words twisty, little, passages, and maze. [...]

At this point I honestly don’t remember much about Adventure goes, so I’m going to blog about my playing experientially, like The Stack and The CRPG Addict. I’ve hit a snag on the Don Eckman port: I CAN SUSPEND YOUR ADVENTURE FOR YOU SO THAT YOU CAN RESUME LATER, BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT [...]

I figured while I was poking at Adventure I might as well move on to the 1977 Crowther and Woods version. Unfortunately, even getting the “most authentic” version can be a challenge; the list of available versions is epic. It would seem a simple matter to just pick WOOD0350 (the original Fortran source) but that [...]

* The LAMP in the game can be referred to as a HEADLAMP. In other words, the proper visualization is not this but this: * WEAR is understood as picking something up. * The game is in a “semibrief” mode of sorts where a full room description is displayed upon first entering a room and [...]

A long held-belief about Crowther’s Adventure was that it was designed as a “cave simulation” and it was Woods who came along added magic and treasures and turned it from interactive simulation into interactive fiction. We know, from the hard work of Dennis Jerz locating the original source (before Don Woods started modifying it) that [...]