Genre(s): Adventure/Text-Based

Rating: No third party ratings found.

Price: FREE

Alternatively, Zork Anthology which includes Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero, and Planetfall is available from gog.com for around $5.99.

Description:
Zork: The Great Underground Empire along with the sequels Zork II and Zork III are classic text adventure games. The player begins as an “adventurer” standing near a white house in a nice forest, but soon descends into the Great Underground Empire, where most of the game takes place. The player’s quest is to collect the Nineteen Treasures of Zork.As was typical for adventure games of its era, Zork does not use graphics. Instead, it communicates with the player via text, and the player interacts with the game by typing commands, such as “examine mailbox” or “take torch”. For movement, the player types in geographical directions (such as “north” or “east” – or just “n” and “e”), and can check what items are being carried with the “inventory” command (or just “i”).

Zork was ported over from mainframes in the late 1970s. It is one of the first “text adventures” and is widely considered to be one of the great classics of the genre which reached the peak of its popularity in the ’80s.

Publisher: Infocom

Developer: Infocom

Release Date: 1980

Players: Single player

ERSB: N/A

Sample Gameplay Video: