Zork!

Project 1 of my new term at NUCA is to re-imagine a game that our tutors have set us. I drew a game called Zork, one of the first interactive adventure games 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language.


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 the "Great Underground Empire" alive with the treasures, ultimately inheriting the title of Dungeon Master. The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures, objects and locations, among them grues, zorkmids, and Flood Control Dam #3— all of which are referenced by subsequent Infocom text adventures.


In short the game was very frustrating and I hardly got anywhere before I died. Just from playing it I got a sense of exploration and this triggered my thought patterns, eventually leading to the creation I will be blogging about.