Zork: The Great Underground Empire

The Good
The language of this text adventure is excellent and it really gets the imagination going. It's of course greatly influenced by the Colossal Cave game from the '70s made by Will Crowther, a cave explorer(spelunker). Zork 1 has detailed geographical descriptions of the caves, forests, mountains and other places you explore, which gives the game a slightly educational feel. Much like Colossal Cave, within all the realism is fantasy and mythology, and the game also has a strong sense of humour. One other notable thing is the intelligence of the parser, which will understand quite a bit of input, sadly a lot more than many other text adventure games.

The Bad
While I think the problem solving is more reasonable than in the next two Zork games, the problems are still a bit strange and it could take some people years to figure out how to complete the game. Some of the solutions were satisfying to discover, while others I thought were silly and hurt the game.

The Bottom Line
Well I suppose it's a big ask to expect people to play text adventures today, but if anyone ever wanted to take the challenge of playing a game with no graphics, this, along with Planet Fall, I'd recommend. It'd be very satisfying to see a young gamer somehow get past the natural dismissiveness and see the good in the game.