Zork
| Developer: Infocom | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Infocom | Sound: |
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| Year: 1986 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Text adventure | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
6/10 | |
To talk about a somewhat niche genre on the Amiga, the text adventure or interactive fiction game, I’ve chosen Zork, which is undoubtedly the most iconic.
It follows the principle of Adventure Quest: you’re an adventurer in a fantasy world in search of treasures. Zork is the evolved version, so to speak. It includes three episodes on the Amiga, collected in a trilogy:
- Zork: The Great Underground Empire
- Zork 2: The Wizard of Frobozz
- Zork 3: The Dungeon Master
Other episodes were released later, and you can find them on abandonware sites.
The game is a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book, but on screen. You interact by typing full sentences or keywords in English (some of these games exist in French, take a look at IFiction-FR).
The first interactive fictions date back to the 1970s, and it’s needless to say that the technological limitations of the time didn’t allow for a graphical interface, even the amount of text was limited.
No interface means a pen and paper to draw a map as you progress, note the objects you find, etc. You really feel like an actor, as your imagination does the rest since it’s all text. This is part of the charm that would later disappear with the rise of point-and-click games.
The problem with this type of game is that patience is required. Sometimes you get stuck, sometimes you know what to do but can’t figure out how to explain it to the machine. My sessions inevitably end in a flurry of curse words in front of a stoic computer…
“Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”
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