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.
>get leaflet
Taken.
>read leaflet
Zork was one of the earliest works of
Interactive Fiction, written in 1977-79 by Tim Anderson, Marc Blanc, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling. In 1980, the game was split into three parts for home computers, where it became an immediate success, launching game publisher
Infocom, and was followed by no less than twelve sequels.
Most of the series takes place in
The Great Underground Empire.
At the bottom of the leaflet is a list of games in the series.
>read list
The Zork series consists of:
- The Original Trilogy
- Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980)
- Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981)
- Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982)
- The Enchanter Trilogy
- Enchanter (1983)
- Sorcerer (1984)
- Spellbreaker (1985)
- Wishbringer (1985)
- Beyond Zork (1987) (adds RPG Elements)
- Zork Zero (1988)
- The Zork Quest "Interactive Comics"
- Zork Quest I: Assault on Egreth Castle (1988)
- Zork Quest II: The Crystal of Doom (1989)
- Graphical Games
Four
novels set in the world of Zork also exist:
The Zork Chronicles by George Alec Effinger,
Enchanter and
The Lost City of Zork by Robin W. Bailey, and
Wishbringer by Craig Shaw Gardner. As well as four
Choose Your Own Adventure-style books,
The Forces of Krill, The Malifestro Quest, The Cavern of Doom, and
Conquest at Quendor.
A bag of tropes is nearby.
>examine tropes
Which tropes do you mean, the red ones or the blue ones?
>x all
The Zork series provides examples of:
- AFGNCAAP (Trope Namer)
- Acme Products (The many, many subsidiaries of FrobozzCo International)
- Back From The Dead and Death Is Cheap (You; most of the games have a mechanism for bringing the player character back to life, and in Sorcerer dying actually simplifies a certain puzzle)
- Control Room Puzzle (Subverted in Zork: Grand Inquisitor. The puzzle was impossible to solve unless you used a certain spell in addition to pushing buttons.)
- Darker And Edgier (Zork Nemesis, which abandons almost all pretenses of comedy and light satire in favor of Gothic horror)
- (The Enchanter Trilogy, too, where you're thwarting the plans of some flavor of Evil Overlord instead of just searching for treasure in a cave and getting rid of a senile wizard along the way.)
- Drop In Nemesis ("Oh, no! A lurking grue slithered into the room and devoured you!")
- Feelies (Like all Infocom games, all the text-based Zork games came with several feelies. Almost all were essential for completing their respective game.)
- Global Currency (Zorkmids)
- Guide Dang It (Some of the puzzles were ridiculous! For example, in Zork Zero a wizard casts a hunger spell on you which will eventually kill you unless you eat something, but the only food in the game is a granola bar (which is bird food). The solution? Turn yourself into a flamingo! And even THAT was absurdly difficult!)
- Have A Nice Death (suicide in text games is a wholesome and entertaining pastime.)
- Hostage For Mac Guffin (Wishbringer)
- Inventory Management Puzzle
- Kleptomaniac Hero
- Lighter And Softer (Wishbringer, sort of; it's aimed at kids and beginners)
- Memetic Mutation (Grues are a fad among Uncyclopedia)
- Methuselah Syndrome (Many characters, justified or otherwise: Dalboz and Yannick, Lucy Flathead, Zylon the Aged, and Antharia Jack.)
- Mythology Gag (In various games, you can see the exploits of the player character in a previous game and either travel there or bring the character to you)
- No Fair Cheating: Most of the interactive Zork books had a selection that asked for an item that doesn't exist and called you out for cheating if you went for it.
- Non Linear Sequel
- No Name Given (Not only is the AFGNCAAP player nameless, there's also a "lean and hungry gentleman" in the first game who has no name, and needs none.)
- The hint guide identifies the "lean and hungry gentleman" as "The Thief". Still fits the trope, though.
- Nonstandard Game Over (If you mess up in the endgames of the Enchanter Trilogy, you can get a negative score and the title "Menace to Society" for unleashing a horror upon the world)
- Nothing Is Scarier ("It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.")
- President Evil (Lord Dimwit Flathead the Excessive)
- Schizo Tech (Zork technology is roughly WWII level, augmented by magic)
- Set Piece Puzzle
- Stock Puzzle (Nearly all of them, at one point or another.)
- The Magic Goes Away (Sets off the plot of Spellbreaker and Beyond Zork, the former starting with your spellbook.)
- The Many Deathsof You (Zork probably pioneered this trope in computer games.)
- The Maze (At least once per game in the text-based games, though only the first game really has straight examples.)
- To Hell And Back (Zork I, Zork Grand Inquisitor)
- Xanatos Sucker (You, in Spellbreaker)
- You Cant Get Ye Flask (the Ur Example)
