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 two parts for home computers and sold on giant B: floppy disks (remember those?), where it became an immediate success, launching game publisher Infocom. It was followed almost immediately by a part III (a completely original Infocom game), and eventually had 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.
Legends of Zork (an MMORPG, now closed) (2009-2011)
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:
Acme Products: The many, many subsidiaries of FrobozzCo International
Affectionate Parody: Pork 1: The Great Underground Sewer System and its sequel Pork 2: The Gizzard of Showbiz.
Artistic License - Economics: During the reign of King Dimwit the Excessive, all internal trade in Quendor was between various branches of Mega Corp FrobozzCo, and there was only one bank. Not that many people had much in the way of savings, seeing as Dimwit enacted a 98% income tax in order to fund his enormous tributes to his own ego, such as an 18 month coronation ceremony, a palace large enough to hold a significant fraction of the country's population, a massive flood control dam in a region that was never in danger of flooding, and a statue of himself several bloits high. This may be the reason why his brother General T.J. "Stonewall" Flathead had to fight three civil wars and suppress roughly 16,000 tax riots (Which works out to 2-3 riots a day on average) over the course of his reign.
Autocannibalism: The command "eat self" returns the message "Autocannibalism is not the answer."
Back from the Dead and Death Is Cheap: You; most of the games have a mechanism for bringing the player character back to life. Although dying made some of the games unwinnable - Zork I, for example. You lose 10 points for dying, and can only complete the game by getting all 350 points.
Black Widow: Lucrezia Flathead. Seventeen husbands, none of whom made it to their first anniversary (fourteen of them didn't survive the wedding night).
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.
Death Is Cheap: At least it is in the gamebooks, where if you die you're given a chance to go back and try again. Unless you fell for one of the cheater traps.
A huge number of fan sequels have been created using the Inform programming language, including Balances and Spiritwrak.
Feelies: As became standard for Infocom games, all the text-based Zork games after the original trilogy came with several feelies. Almost all were essential for completing their respective game.
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!
Notably, the Lighter and Softer and easier game Wishbringer has a bad one: the can with the rattlesnake has a false bottom which contains Wishbringer. The only hint is the item rattling even after it's opened, and considering that you likely dropped it after using it the first time, you're not likely to notice.
Spellbreaker was so hard the developers actually apologized and admitted most people would have to use a hint book to finish it.
Even most walkthroughs can't adequately explain the bank vault puzzle, and suggest the player just save the game (which resets the puzzle) and keep trying until the partial solution works.
Have a Nice Death: Suicide in text games is a wholesome and entertaining pastime.
Hell Seeker: The backstory has the legend of Saint Yoruk, who traveled to Hades to meet with the Devil and learn the secrets of magic from him. When Yoruk died, his soul went to heaven, but as he'd gotten used to Hades, he fought his way back there.
Informed Attribute: The competency of many of the Twelve Flatheads. Among their number were a General who once sustained 75% casualties assaulting an empty fortress, an Admiral who got his entire fleet sunk within two years of assuming command, an athlete whose opposing teams kept getting kicked out of the league by royal decree, and a painter whose patrons were escorted to his studio by his brother's militia.
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.
No Name Given: Not only is the Featureless Protagonist nameless, but virtually all characters in the original trilogy have no names beyond their professions ("the thief," "the Wizard of Frobozz," and "the Dungeon Master").
Nothing Is Scarier: "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
Percussive Maintenance: The "impact revitalisation" that the lamp has undergone in "Zork: The Undiscovered Underground".
Stolen Good, Returned Better: One of the treasures you find is a golden egg... but if you let the thief steal it, when you find his lair later, you find that the egg has been opened, and it contains a golden singing bird — much more valuable!
The Taming Of The Grue: The trope namer, grues, first appeared as the unseen (and, because they never leave pitch-dark areas, unseeable) monsters who would eat adventurers careless enough to wander in dark places without a light source. Later works such as Wishbringer and Zork: The Undiscovered Underground would play grues for laughs; Wishbringer featured a grue lair with a refrigerator whose light goes out when you open it and a mother grue with an apron, while Undiscovered Underground had a grue convention where grues would discuss topics such as 'Surviving the lean years'. The grues were still dangerous, but played less seriously than in earlier works.
The Verse: In addition to the main games, the Zork universe contained Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker, and Wishbringer. There are also a couple of hints that The Lurking Horror, another Infocom game, may also take place in the same universe, but nothing concrete.
We Have Reserves: Stonewall Flathead's military campaigns suffered 98% casualties on average (Replacing casualties with his powers of unlimited conscription), which makes his taking a mere 75% casualties when storming an empty fortress at the start of his career seem impressive. With casualties like that (combined with the fact that his army was pretty much continuously in action due to his brother's inept rule), the amazing thing is how long it took before he got killed in a 'friendly fire' incident.
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