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, 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.
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)
- Control Room Puzzle
- Darker And Edgier (Zork Nemesis, which abandons almost all pretenses of comedy and light satire in favor of Gothic horror)
- Drop In Nemesis ("Oh, no! A lurking grue slithered into the room and devoured you!")
- Global Currency (Zorkmids)
- Inventory Management Puzzle
- Kleptomaniac Hero
- Non Linear Sequel
- 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 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)
- Methuselah Syndrome (Many characters, justified or otherwise: Dalboz and Yannick, Lucy Flathead, Zylon the Aged, and Antharia Jack.)
>I don't see any red tropes here.
