>open trap door. go down.
The door reluctantly opens to reveal a rickety staircase descending into darkness.
The trap door crashes shut, and you hear someone barring it.
Cellar You are in a dark and damp cellar with a narrow passageway leading north, and a crawlway to the south. On the west is the bottom of a steep metal ramp which is unclimbable.
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.
Hrm. Was hoping there was more use to it than "tells you if you're within on tile of a troll". Which direction the troll is in would be nice, at the very least.
s
Hrm. Was hoping there was more use to it than "tells you if you're within on tile of a troll". Which direction the troll is in would be nice, at the very least.
s
>s East of Chasm You are on the east edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be seen. A narrow passage goes north, and the path you are on continues to the east.
Your sword is no longer glowing.
>e Gallery
This is an art gallery. Most of the paintings have been stolen by vandals with exceptional taste. The vandals left through either the north or west exits.
Fortunately, there is still one chance for you to be a vandal, for on the far wall is a painting of unparalleled beauty.
>examine painting
There's nothing special about the painting.
(You know, just a painting of unparalleled beauty. Whatevs. You're a dashing adventurer not an art critic.)
('there's nothing special about ____' is of course the default description that gets displayed if a custom description hasn't been set for an object. In a more modern work of interactive fiction you'd expect basically everything to have custom descriptions, let alone important objects. Which is mostly a positive development, although, perhaps there is a little something to be said for the spareness of early games like Zork. Like sometimes you'll be playing a more recent game, and a room has a 10 paragraph description, and then you wind up examining everything in the room, which gives you reams more description, and it's like ok, am I playing a game or reading a Dostoevsky novel.)
>n Studio This appears to have been an artist's studio. The walls and floors are splattered with paints of 69 different colors. Strangely enough, nothing of value is hanging here. At the south end of the room is an open door (also covered with paint). A dark and narrow chimney leads up from a fireplace; although you might be able to get up it, it seems unlikely you could get back down.
Loosely attached to a wall is a small piece of paper.
You are the privileged owner of ZORK I: The Great Underground Empire, a self-contained and self-maintaining universe. If used and maintained in accordance with normal operating practices for small universes, ZORK will provide many months of trouble-free operation.
s then take painting
I still can't see any use for it at the moment but whatever, I probably will need it for something or else it wouldn't be there.
It wouldn't be there, and it wouldn't be specifically encouraging me to take it.
>s then take painting Gallery This is an art gallery. Most of the paintings have been stolen by vandals with exceptional taste. The vandals left through either the north or west exits.
Fortunately, there is still one chance for you to be a vandal, for on the far wall is a painting of unparalleled beauty.
Your load is too heavy.
(Oh boy, just what everyone loves. Strict inventory limits!)
>i
You are carrying:
A rope
A nasty knife
A brass lantern (providing light)
A jewel-encrusted egg
A brown sack
The brown sack contains: - A lunch
A clove of garlic
A sword
A leaflet
>w then n East of Chasm You are on the east edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be seen. A narrow passage goes north, and the path you are on continues to the east.
Cellar You are in a dark and damp cellar with a narrow passageway leading north, and a crawlway to the south. On the west is the bottom of a steep metal ramp which is unclimbable.
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.
>examine ramp
There's nothing special about the chute.
(I'm not 100% sure, but my read here is that the stairway became a ramp when the trap door was bolted shut? Before you descended, it said there was a "rickety staircase" leading down. Then when you got to the cellar, it said there was a "steep metal ramp" leading up. I'm picturing it being a mechanical contraption, where the steps swing out or back when the door is latched or unlatched.)
>s then e then n East of Chasm You are on the east edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be seen. A narrow passage goes north, and the path you are on continues to the east.
Your sword is no longer glowing.
Gallery This is an art gallery. Most of the paintings have been stolen by vandals with exceptional taste. The vandals left through either the north or west exits.
A small leaflet is on the ground.
There is a clove of garlic here.
A hot pepper sandwich is here.
Studio This appears to have been an artist's studio. The walls and floors are splattered with paints of 69 different colors. Strangely enough, nothing of value is hanging here. At the south end of the room is an open door (also covered with paint). A dark and narrow chimney leads up from a fireplace; although you might be able to get up it, it seems unlikely you could get back down.
Loosely attached to a wall is a small piece of paper.
>up
You can't get up there with what you're carrying.
Will putting stuff in the sack decrease my encumbrance at all?
(honestly not sure.)
>save
Please supply a filename for save
Ok.
>put all in sack
painting: Done.
rope: There's no room.
nasty knife: There's no room.
brass lantern: There's no room.
jewel-encrusted egg: There's no room.
brown sack: How can you do that?
sword: There's no room.
>remove all from sack
painting: Taken.
>put knife, egg, and rope in sack
nasty knife: Done.
jewel-encrusted egg: Done.
rope: There's no room.
>remove all from sack then put sword and rope in sack
jewel-encrusted egg: Taken.
nasty knife: Taken.
sword: There's no room.
rope: Done.
(So a lot of folks bemoan strict inventory limits as being tedious, but I'm actually not opposed to 'em, I don't think. I mean you don't got an infinite bag of holding in real life. Also I think they can be a nice source of tension: 'oh man I want this, but to get it I gotta drop these other things, but what if I need those other things later?' 'oh and now I gotta drop most of my stuff to go through here? ahh')
(The design decision that strikes me as actually egregious here is this idea of a chimney that you can climb up but you can't climb down. That makes no sense! It is easier to climb down things than up them! I actually like the idea of a one way passage because, again, it's a nice source of tension: 'oh I want to go there, but what if I can't come back?' It would just make far more sense if they presented a chimney that you can scramble down but can't climb up.)
(But I don't want to beat up on the game too much - I do think that it does a lot of stuff subtly right, from a design perspective. I think it's interesting to compare, for example, the opening of Zork to the opening of Colossal Cave Adventure, an earlier work of interactive fiction that Zork is kind of based on...)
(Colossal Cave's intro: "You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.")
(Zork's intro: You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. / There is a small mailbox here.".)
(The intros are very similar, but I think there's one big difference: Colossal Cave Adventure starts you off with a setting, Zork starts you off with a setting and a goal. The fact that the house is boarded up instantly makes you think: 'ok, how do I break in?' even though the game never explicitly says that's what you're supposed to do. It gets its hooks in you right away.)
(Anyway this has been an exciting episode of Someone Who Doesn't Really Know Much About Game Design Talks About Game Design.)
Posts
Please supply a filename for restore
Ok.
(Alright, we should be back in the living room, right before you went down through trap door.)
The door reluctantly opens to reveal a rickety staircase descending into darkness.
The trap door crashes shut, and you hear someone barring it.
Cellar
You are in a dark and damp cellar with a narrow passageway leading north, and a crawlway to the south. On the west is the bottom of a steep metal ramp which is unclimbable.
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.
I don't know the word "point".
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.
(the sword glowing is a Hobbit/LotR reference)
s
East of Chasm
You are on the east edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be seen. A narrow passage goes north, and the path you are on continues to the east.
Your sword is no longer glowing.
Gallery
This is an art gallery. Most of the paintings have been stolen by vandals with exceptional taste. The vandals left through either the north or west exits.
Fortunately, there is still one chance for you to be a vandal, for on the far wall is a painting of unparalleled beauty.
There's nothing special about the painting.
(You know, just a painting of unparalleled beauty. Whatevs. You're a dashing adventurer not an art critic.)
('there's nothing special about ____' is of course the default description that gets displayed if a custom description hasn't been set for an object. In a more modern work of interactive fiction you'd expect basically everything to have custom descriptions, let alone important objects. Which is mostly a positive development, although, perhaps there is a little something to be said for the spareness of early games like Zork. Like sometimes you'll be playing a more recent game, and a room has a 10 paragraph description, and then you wind up examining everything in the room, which gives you reams more description, and it's like ok, am I playing a game or reading a Dostoevsky novel.)
n
for now.
Studio
This appears to have been an artist's studio. The walls and floors are splattered with paints of 69 different colors. Strangely enough, nothing of value is hanging here. At the south end of the room is an open door (also covered with paint). A dark and narrow chimney leads up from a fireplace; although you might be able to get up it, it seems unlikely you could get back down.
Loosely attached to a wall is a small piece of paper.
Congratulations!
You are the privileged owner of ZORK I: The Great Underground Empire, a self-contained and self-maintaining universe. If used and maintained in accordance with normal operating practices for small universes, ZORK will provide many months of trouble-free operation.
I've known strange people, but fighting a ZORK owner's manual?
I still can't see any use for it at the moment but whatever, I probably will need it for something or else it wouldn't be there.
It wouldn't be there, and it wouldn't be specifically encouraging me to take it.
Gallery
This is an art gallery. Most of the paintings have been stolen by vandals with exceptional taste. The vandals left through either the north or west exits.
Fortunately, there is still one chance for you to be a vandal, for on the far wall is a painting of unparalleled beauty.
Your load is too heavy.
(Oh boy, just what everyone loves. Strict inventory limits!)
You are carrying:
A rope
A nasty knife
A brass lantern (providing light)
A jewel-encrusted egg
A brown sack
The brown sack contains:
- A lunch
A clove of garlic
A sword
A leaflet
drop lunch, garlic, and leaflet
>drop lunch, garlic, and leaflet
lunch: Dropped.
clove of garlic: Dropped.
leaflet: Dropped.
take painting
Taken.
(Your score is now 34.)
You can't go that way.
East of Chasm
You are on the east edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be seen. A narrow passage goes north, and the path you are on continues to the east.
Cellar
You are in a dark and damp cellar with a narrow passageway leading north, and a crawlway to the south. On the west is the bottom of a steep metal ramp which is unclimbable.
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.
There's nothing special about the chute.
(I'm not 100% sure, but my read here is that the stairway became a ramp when the trap door was bolted shut? Before you descended, it said there was a "rickety staircase" leading down. Then when you got to the cellar, it said there was a "steep metal ramp" leading up. I'm picturing it being a mechanical contraption, where the steps swing out or back when the door is latched or unlatched.)
East of Chasm
You are on the east edge of a chasm, the bottom of which cannot be seen. A narrow passage goes north, and the path you are on continues to the east.
Your sword is no longer glowing.
Gallery
This is an art gallery. Most of the paintings have been stolen by vandals with exceptional taste. The vandals left through either the north or west exits.
A small leaflet is on the ground.
There is a clove of garlic here.
A hot pepper sandwich is here.
Studio
This appears to have been an artist's studio. The walls and floors are splattered with paints of 69 different colors. Strangely enough, nothing of value is hanging here. At the south end of the room is an open door (also covered with paint). A dark and narrow chimney leads up from a fireplace; although you might be able to get up it, it seems unlikely you could get back down.
Loosely attached to a wall is a small piece of paper.
>up
You can't get up there with what you're carrying.
>save
Please supply a filename for save
Ok.
>put all in sack
painting: Done.
rope: There's no room.
nasty knife: There's no room.
brass lantern: There's no room.
jewel-encrusted egg: There's no room.
brown sack: How can you do that?
sword: There's no room.
>remove all from sack
painting: Taken.
>put knife, egg, and rope in sack
nasty knife: Done.
jewel-encrusted egg: Done.
rope: There's no room.
remove all from sack then put sword and rope in sack
jewel-encrusted egg: Taken.
nasty knife: Taken.
sword: There's no room.
rope: Done.
(So a lot of folks bemoan strict inventory limits as being tedious, but I'm actually not opposed to 'em, I don't think. I mean you don't got an infinite bag of holding in real life. Also I think they can be a nice source of tension: 'oh man I want this, but to get it I gotta drop these other things, but what if I need those other things later?' 'oh and now I gotta drop most of my stuff to go through here? ahh')
(The design decision that strikes me as actually egregious here is this idea of a chimney that you can climb up but you can't climb down. That makes no sense! It is easier to climb down things than up them! I actually like the idea of a one way passage because, again, it's a nice source of tension: 'oh I want to go there, but what if I can't come back?' It would just make far more sense if they presented a chimney that you can scramble down but can't climb up.)
(But I don't want to beat up on the game too much - I do think that it does a lot of stuff subtly right, from a design perspective. I think it's interesting to compare, for example, the opening of Zork to the opening of Colossal Cave Adventure, an earlier work of interactive fiction that Zork is kind of based on...)
(Colossal Cave's intro: "You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.")
(Zork's intro: You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. / There is a small mailbox here.".)
(The intros are very similar, but I think there's one big difference: Colossal Cave Adventure starts you off with a setting, Zork starts you off with a setting and a goal. The fact that the house is boarded up instantly makes you think: 'ok, how do I break in?' even though the game never explicitly says that's what you're supposed to do. It gets its hooks in you right away.)
(Anyway this has been an exciting episode of Someone Who Doesn't Really Know Much About Game Design Talks About Game Design.)