Zork: The Great Underground Empire

Description

Zork: The Great Underground Empire is a classic text adventure game. You begin as an "adventurer" standing near a white house in a nice forest, but soon you set foot in the Great Underground Empire, where most of the game takes place. Your quest is to collect the Nineteen Treasures of Zork.

As in every text adventure, Zork does not use graphics. It communicates with the player via text, and the player interacts with the game by typing commands, such as "examine mailbox" or "take torch". For movement, the player types in geographical directions (such as "north" or "east" - or just "n" and "e"), and he can check what items he's carrying with the "inventory" command (or just "i").

Zork was ported over from mainframes in the late 1970s. It is one of the first "text adventures" (although the proper term for such by die-hard fans is Interactive Fiction) and is widely considered to be one of the great classics of the genre which reached the peak of its popularity in the 80's.

Alternate Titles

• "Zork I: The Great Underground Empire" -- Re-release title
• "Zork I" -- Renamed title (after second and third Zork games were released)
• "Zork" -- Personal Software published name

Part of the Following Groups

• Games made into books
• Zork series

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User Reviews

Zork?!? Zork What? Zork you too, pal.	DOS	rs2000 (15)
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a great game here.	DOS	Steelysama (106)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.	DOS	stvedder (6445)
The most eclectic and interesting of the series	DOS	Colin Rowsell (45)
A great introduction to interactive fiction.	DOS	Mirrorshades2k (282)
The one that stated it all for Infocom	DOS	Tony Van (2707)
One of the first PC games I played	DOS	JubalHarshaw (287)

The Press Says

Adventure Classic Gaming	DOS	May 10, 1998	5 out of 5	100
Quandary	DOS	Jul, 1996		100
Retrogaming.it	Apple II	May, 2008	9 out of 10	90
Amiga Action	Amiga	Jan, 1991	83 out of 100	83
PC Player (Germany)	DOS	Aug, 1994	78 out of 100	78
SPAG	DOS	Dec 13, 1997	6.1 out of 10	61
Abandonia	DOS	Dec 03, 2004	3 out of 5	60

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
Be honest about Zork	13	Indra was here... (13177) Oct 23, 2007
You are likely to be eaten ...	5	Sam Jeffreys (3331) Sep 16, 2007

Trivia

As part of the release of Zork Nemesis, Activision released Zork I as freeware on their website. (At present, the links to download the game at activision.com are dead, but the game is available at numerous fan sites.)