Zork and the Great Underground Empire — #monthofjoy
West of House You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. >open mailbox Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet. >take leaflet Taken. >read leaflet “WELCOME TO ZORK! ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!” Some of the earliest computer games had no graphics whatsoever. With a strictly text based interface, interactive fiction games by companies like Infocom defined a stratum of adventure games in the early and mid 1980’s. The Zork games were set in a fictional fantasy universe revolving around the Great Underground Empire — a civilization built in the ruins of an old, fallen civilization which colonized the realm underneath the earth. With manuals that extended the playground of the imagination, the Zork games were a highlight of Infocom’s worldbuilding in the midst of providing text adventures and puzzles that encouraged the imagination to bring the worlds to life.
