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random article about wikipedia contact us contribute help learn to edit community portal recent changes upload file special pages search search appearance donate create account log in personal tools donate create account log in contents move to sidebar hide top 1 gameplay 2 plot 3 development toggle development subsection 3 1 inception 3 2 creation 3 3 infocom 4 reception toggle reception subsection 4 1 sales 4 2 reviews 5 legacy toggle legacy subsection 5 1 later games and media 6 references toggle references subsection 6 1 sources 7 external links toggle the table of contents zork 26 languages العربية català čeština deutsch español فارسی suomi français עברית hrvatski bahasa indonesia italiano 日本語 한국어 ladin bahasa melayu nederlands norsk bokmål polski português русский simple english svenska українська 吴语 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikimedia commons wikiquote wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia 1977 video game this article is about the 1977 video game for other uses see zork disambiguation 1977 video game zork zork i cover art developer infocom publishers personal software infocom designers tim anderson marc blank dave lebling bruce daniels engine zil platforms pdp 10 pdp 11 personal computer various release 1977 zork 1980 zork i 1981 zork ii 1982 zork iii genres adventure interactive fiction mode single player zork is a text adventure game first released in 1977 by developers tim anderson marc blank bruce daniels and dave lebling for the pdp 10 mainframe computer the original developers and others as the company infocom expanded and split the game into three titles zork i the great underground empire zork ii the wizard of frobozz and zork iii the dungeon master which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980 in zork the player explores the abandoned great underground empire in search of treasure the player moves between the game s hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets the program acts as a narrator describing the player s location and the results of the player s commands it has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction the original game developed between 1977 and 1979 at the massachusetts institute of technology mit was inspired by colossal cave adventure 1976 the first well known example of interactive fiction and the first well known adventure game the developers wanted to make a similar game that was able to understand more complicated sentences than adventure s two word commands in 1979 they founded infocom with several other colleagues at the mit computer center blank and joel berez created a way to run a smaller portion of zork on several brands of microcomputer letting them commercialize the game as infocom s first products the first episode was published by personal software in 1980 after which infocom purchased back the rights and self published all three episodes beginning in late 1981 zork was a massive success for infocom with sales increasing for years as the market for personal computers expanded the first episode sold more than 38 000 copies in 1982 and around 150 000 copies in 1984 collectively the three episodes sold more than 680 000 copies through 1986 comprising more than one third of infocom s sales in this period infocom was purchased by activision in 1986 leading to new zork games beginning in 1987 as well as a series of books reviews of the episodes were very positive with several reviewers calling zork the best adventure game to date critics regard it as one of the greatest video games later historians have noted the game as foundational to the adventure game genre as well as influencing the mud and massively multiplayer online role playing game genres in 2007 zork was included in the game canon by the library of congress as one of the ten most important video games in history gameplay edit zork being played on a kaypro cp m computer zork is a text based adventure game wherein the player explores the ruins of the great underground empire the player types text commands for their character to traverse locations solve puzzles and collect treasure the game has hundreds of locations each with a name and description and the player s commands interact with the objects obstacles and creatures within them commands can be one or two words e g get lamp or north or more complex phrases e g put the lamp and sword in the case the command must fit the location s context e g get lamp works only if a lamp is present the program acts as a narrator describing to the player their location and the results of certain actions if the game does not understand the player s commands it asks for the player to retype their actions 1 2 3 the program s replies are typically in a sarcastic conversational tone much as a game master would use in leading players in a tabletop role playing game 4 the original 1977 version of the game was a single release zork when it was converted into a commercial software title it was divided into three episodes with new and expanded sections added to the latter two episodes 1 much of the game world is composed of puzzles that must eventually be solved such as a set of buttons on a dam or a maze to be traversed some puzzles have more than one solution 5 for instance since the loud room is too overwhelmingly loud for the player to perform actions the player can either empty the nearby dam to stop the sound of water falling or shout echo in the room to change its acoustics 3 6 in the first episode or zork i a thief character is wandering the underground as well taking items that have been left behind or even stealing from the player s possessions 7 the player can fight or evade the thief and can recover stolen items from the thief s treasure room 1 6 some locations contain antagonists that the player must fight or overcome beginning in zork ii the player can learn magic spells to use in puzzles and combat 5 in dark areas the player must carry a lantern or other light source to avoid being eaten by a monster called a grue 2 8 there is a limit to how much inventory one can carry determined by the combined weight of objects rather than the quantity 1 a principal goal of each episode is to collect all the treasures many of which are hidden behind puzzles 5 as treasures are collected or tasks are accomplished the player s score increases providing a rough measure of how much of the game has been completed the player may traverse the game world and solve puzzles in almost any order although some passageways require problem solving to get through and some puzzles require the player to possess something gained from solving a different puzzle in zork iii unlike in prior episodes there is a timed component that directly affects the outcome an earthquake will occur after about 130 moves opening one passageway and closing another in each episode the treasures are needed to reach the conclusion of the game 3 9 10 plot edit map of the 1977 zork world drawn by aaron a reed for the 50 years of text games project most of the setting is established through the game s written descriptions of items and locations as well as manuals in later game releases the game is set in a massive cave complex built by the quendor empire which was eventually renamed to the great underground empire by lord dimwit flathead who spent his reign building massive largely pointless projects such as an underground dam and the royal museum the empire s overspending caused it to collapse and all the residents left the abandoned empire is the setting of the three episodes of zork 11 zork i begins with the unnamed player standing in an open field west of a white house the house leads to an underground area where most of the game takes place the player must find 19 treasures and store them in a trophy case in zork ii the player learns of the royal flathead family and meets the wizard of frobozz a once respected enchanter exiled by lord dimwit flathead when his powers began to fade the wizard appears randomly throughout the game and casts spells that begin with the letter f on the player these have several effects such as fluoresce which causes the player to glow and freeze which keeps the player stuck in place for a few turns the player must obtain the wand from the wizard to complete the final puzzles in zork iii the player character gathers the garb of the dungeon master to become his successor once the player has all the items they must feed an elderly man who reveals himself as the dungeon master and shows them the doorway leading to the final hallway after the player solves the final puzzles and accesses the treasury of zork the dungeon master appears and transforms the player to look like himself signifying the player s succession to his position before he vanishes ending the trilogy the 1977 version of the game is mostly similar to zork i but includes several areas puzzles and treasures that became part of zork ii as well as the puzzle room and the endgame that became part of zork iii additionally after the player finds and stores all 32 treasures the dungeon master invites the player to the tomb of the unknown implementor leading to the endgame development edit inception edit marc blank in 2018 bruce daniels in 2009 and dave lebling in 2010 tim anderson marc blank bruce daniels and dave lebling began developing zork in may 1977 the four were members of the dynamic modelling group a computer science research division at the massachusetts institute of technology mit laboratory for computer science anderson blank and daniels as students and lebling as a research staff member 12 their work was inspired by colossal cave adventure a text based game that is the first well known example of interactive fiction and the first well known adventure game adventure was immensely popular among the small population of computer users of the time and a big hit at mit in early 1977 13 by the end of may players had managed to completely solve it 8 the four programmers began to design a game that would be a better text adventure game with inputs more complex than adventure s two word commands and puzzles less obtuse 8 they believed that their division s mdl programming language would be better suited for processing complex text inputs than the fortran code used in adventure 8 14 the group was familiar with creating video games blank and anderson had worked on a multiplayer trivia game called trivia 1976 and lebling was heavily involved with maze 1973 a multiplayer first person shooter and the first 3d first person game ever made lebling first created a natural language input system or parser that could process typed two word instructions anderson and blank built a small prototype text game to use it 8 12 zork s prototype was built for the digital equipment corporation dec pdp 10 mainframe computer the only system that supported their programming language 8 while lebling took a two week vacation anderson blank and daniels designed an adventure game concept which anderson and blank then developed as an early version of zork this prototype contained simple versions of many concepts seen in the final game including puzzles and locations according to anderson it took time for people to learn how to write good problems and lebling s first uncomplex parser was only almost as smart as adventure s the game was unnamed so the group chose zork as the file name one of several nonsense words used around the lab at the time in a variety of contexts 2 15 anderson later said that the group often used the term for programs still in development the group referring to themselves as the implementers continued working on the game after lebling returned adding features and iterating on the parser through june 1977 8 grues were added to replace pits that would kill players in the dark while play testing lebling noticed that his character fell into a pit while in the attic of the house the name grue was taken from the works of jack vance though the design of the monster was original to zork 12 lebling contends that adventure was one of zork s only influences as there were few other games to emulate at the time although the game s combat is based on dungeons dragons lebling said the other developers had never played it 16 he also thought of the parser and associated text responses as taking on the role of the dungeon master from a dungeons dragons game trying to lead the player through a story solely by describing it this had also been the idea behind the parser in adventure 4 17 creation edit the developers did not announce their game while it was in development but a lack of security on the mit systems meant that anyone who could access the pdp 10 computer over the arpanet could see what programs were being run as a result a small community of people many of whom had been involved in playing and contributing to trivia would snoop on the system for new programs they found the new zork adventure game and spread word of it under that name 12 18 this community dozens or possibly hundreds of players according to lebling interacted with the developers as they created the game playtesting additions and submitting bug reports 16 18 the implementers added a command transcript feature to keep track of what commands players tried to use unsuccessfully 16 by the end of june the game was approximately half the size of the final zork and had a substantial community of players for the time the group added locations such as a volcano and coal mine and soon shifted their efforts to improving the game s engine and adding the ability to save the player s progress in the game following user requests they also added the ability for the game to run on pdp 10 computers running different operating systems tenex and tops 20 which were much more popular than the incompatible timesharing system operating system the mit computer used these users then set up a mailing list to distribute updates to the game the developers returned to creating new content in the fall of 1977 adding the alice in wonderland section and a system for fighting enemies 18 around this time community member ted hess at dec decoded the protections the group had made for the source code and another dec employee bob supnik created a port of the game to fortran this port released in march 1978 opened the game to a wider set of players without access to a pdp 10 mainframe 18 19 at the time the team had decided to give the game an actual name besides zork and chose dungeon this name was used for the fortran version which was spread through the dec users group ...