Remembering Zork, by Jeffrey Veen

Remembering Zork

Did you ever play text adventure games years ago? They were the sort of command-line games where you would type simple directions and work your way through a story. I played these for hours and hours as a kid at my friend's house on his dad's teletype. I remember feeding the green and white paper back through as many times as we could to use all the available space. Later I moved on to the Zork series and other Infocomm titles, staying up way to late at my Commodore 64.

I don't know what made me remember Zork recently, but it was a pleasure to find that they're playable online. Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite puzzles:

>look
Tiny Room
This is a tiny room carved out of the wall of 
the ravine. There is an exit down a precarious 
climb. On the north side of the room is a massive 
wooden door, which has a small window barred with
iron. A formidable bolt lock is set within the 
door frame. A keyhole covered by a thin metal lid
lies within the lock.

>open door
The door is locked.

>inventory
You are carrying:
 A sword
 A lamp
 A place mat
 A letter opener
 A newspaper

>examine door
The door is made of oak and is closed.

>look in keyhole
No light can be seen through the keyhole.

>open lid
The lid is now open.

>put newspaper under door
The newspaper crumples up and won't go under
the door.

>put placemat under door
The place mat fits easily under the door.

>put letter opener in keyhole
There is a faint noise from behind the door 
and a small cloud of dust rises from beneath it.

> get placemat
As the placemat is moved, a rusty iron key falls
from it onto the floor.

>get key
Taken.

>unlock door
What do you want to unlock the door with?

>unlock door with key
The keyhole is blocked.

>get letter opener
Taken.

>unlock door with key
The door is now unlocked.

>open door
The door is now open.

Success! I can distinctly remember the feeling of first pulling that place mat out and seeing the key on it. Such a sense of accomplishment for a 12 year old.

Today, people still write and explore interactive fiction, though I pretty much gave it up when I hit high school. These days, I solve tricky problems by typing into an email client rather than a green-screen game. The skills, however, are pretty much the same...

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 11 January 2007 at 11:33 PM. It was filed under Personal.

Comments

1. On 12 January 2007 at 12:00 AM jan korbel wrote:

Oh man, oh man, sweet memories... And of course, you see how it ignited imagination. It was like reading a book you have to interact with to be allowed to turn the pages. And if the story was good - a bliss.

Good one Jeff, thanks for bringing it up.

2. On 12 January 2007 at 12:45 AM Reinier Meenhorst wrote:

I wonder if skills of Second Life will help the next generation solve their tricky problems in the future...

http://www.reiniermeenhorst.nl/2007/01/one-of-my-webdesign-heroes-of-all-time.html

3. On 12 January 2007 at 2:01 AM Meri wrote:

You should check out Kingdom of Loathing - http://www.kingdomofloathing.com. It's remarkable silly but hugely entertaining and very much along the lines of the old text adventures :-)

4. On 12 January 2007 at 2:05 AM Scott G wrote:

wow! What a flashback... my dad actually got me into Zork and we would fight over the computer and share secrets on how to get around and complete different puzzles.

Remember the dragon that you had to get to move? He just kept lazily puffing smoke at you or he would torch you, that one stumped me for ages :-)

5. On 12 January 2007 at 2:47 AM Carl Klutzke wrote:

I went to college for the express purpose of getting the experience to apply for a job at Infocom. I started out studying programming but decided that they already had their IF engine. What they really needed was game designers, so I switched to creative writing, the closest thing I could find. While I was at Purdue, they went under, and I lost direction. I've done a few creative things on the side (including one work of IF: http://games.phos.net/if/almanac.html) but mostly just did whatever work would pay the bills: mostly that's been programming for IT. Only within the past month have I discovered interaction design, and I finally feel again like I know what I want to be when I grow up.

6. On 12 January 2007 at 3:21 AM rich wrote:

Wow, I used to love the Infocom adventure games! Great link. Shall save it for my lunch break :)

I think my favourite Infocom titles were their version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (I seem to recall Douglas Adams was actually involved in it's creation) and the Planetfall / Stationfall games.

7. On 12 January 2007 at 3:32 AM Jon Strande wrote:

Jeff,

Great post! It is all about the interaction.

You might enjoy the book 'Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative' by Mark Meadows.

http://www.pause-effect.com/

A little snippet from the book I just shared with my team:

Redundancy and Context: Cues of Interaction
- Difference provides information
- Repetition provides redundancy
- Redundant Information (a.k.a. "repetition with variation") provides context
- Context allows prediction
- Prediction allows participation
- Participation is the cornerstone of interaction

BTW: I saw you speak at FOWA in San Fran - I really enjoyed your presentation!!!

Jon

8. On 12 January 2007 at 6:10 AM Dennis Doughty wrote:

One of my favorite possessions is a bound (TeX-formatted and printed on MIT's Dover printer) volume which documents a successful playing of the original Zork game. Including an appendix listing all of the amusing ways to die.

The best one? Go into the circular room and "kick the bucket".

Yes, I had too much time on my hands in 1982.

9. On 12 January 2007 at 6:24 AM Rob Fay wrote:

I remember a few such games being available interactively using your AOL IM client. Tried thisa while ago so I'm not sure if it's still an active bot.

10. On 12 January 2007 at 6:26 AM Rob Fay wrote:

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2004/03/21/infocomb.shtml

11. On 12 January 2007 at 9:58 AM Jeff wrote:

I've had that Zork game bookmarked for about 10 years now, since I first came across it in college - which happened as an accident, because they send all 404 errors to the game. What a happy accident.

I never used to play the computer game as a kid, but I did read the Zork choose your own adventure books.

12. On 12 January 2007 at 10:06 AM Mike D. wrote:

Man, I've had a half-baked post about Zork and Infocom sitting in draft mode for months now. I loved those games. Probably played and finished about 10 of them. I feel like with all the advanced graphics and everything else, today's games still somehow don't measure up.

13. On 12 January 2007 at 12:16 PM Ian Muir wrote:

The Zork games were great. There's a similar text based game for Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It was recently redone and put online by the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_andrew.shtml

Lot of fun if you know the book; very frustrating if you don't.

14. On 14 January 2007 at 4:47 PM Ben Buchanan wrote:

"The skills, however, are pretty much the same..."

hehehe I have a mental image of you running into a difficult problem with a client, and solving it with:

> put letter opener in client
After being prodded with a letter opener, the client runs away.

Unfortunately it would probably lead to:

The door is now open.

[/sillyness]

15. On 16 January 2007 at 7:09 AM Mike Papageorge wrote:

Wow, the memories!! Thanks Jeff, I remember playing these in my Dad's office back when I was but a littlin'...

16. On 22 January 2007 at 4:30 PM Craig Goodrich wrote:

Some web sites I really feel as though once again I'm in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike...

These became popular due largely to Adventure, which was included on the DECUS (DEC user group) tape of unsupported software in the late '70s that came free with your PDP-11 (or even PDP-10) operating system.

Infocom then took these (free) text games and rewrote them for MSDOS and made big bucks in the mid 1980s.

At any rate, I just tried to post this clarification to one of your 2004 articles about the Law of Software Envelopment ("Every program expands until it can read email."):

A cultural note: As jwz implies, the Law of Software Envelopment substantially predates jwz's entry into the Wonderful World of Unix. I believe that it goes back to the late 1970s when AT&T code began to be enhanced at Berkeley, but I wouldn't swear to it.

At any rate, it's origins are well back in the High and Far-Off Times.

17. On 15 February 2007 at 5:11 PM Howard Sherman wrote:

Wow. I just Googled Zork to see what was out there and I feel like I stumbled on a virtual meeting of the Zork User's Group!

Zork fans might like to know about this:

http://www.malinche.net/sciencefiction.html

And this:

http://www.adventurecon.org

Watch out for those grues!