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zabzonk | on: Solving the “Zork” Mystery
Before I came across Zork, I thought I was quite intelligent...
eludwig | parent
To be fair, the earliest text adventures are brutally, brutally difficult and in many cases, very much unfair! There are nowhere near enough in-game indicators or foreshadowing of what might work in a certain context. Some solutions are obvious, but others are truly ridiculous and won’t realistically be solved without a walkthrough or “invisi-clue” book. All imo, of course.

Back in the 80’s we used to play these games in a group, with one person driving and a group of others helping out. Even then we used to fall back on hints occasionally.

ChicagoDave | root | parent | next
I played Dungeon, the much larger mainframe version of Zork in 1978. Between me and six other guys it took us nearly a year to finish the game.

At that time, there were no video terminals. There were no monitors (this is high school).

We played Dungeon and Adventure on 17” wide green bar paper terminals, usually a Digital Equipment Corporation DECWriter II or III.

There was no Internet. There was nowhere to go for hints. We simply had to figure everything out.

At that time, these were the first complex computer games. When the Imps created Infocom they made the top ten most popular games until video arrived in classrooms and homes.

There is a fairly active community of hobbyists that still make text games, though evolved away from the brutal puzzles to more balanced narrative and seamless puzzles.

Using Claude I even built my own platform: https://sharpee.net/.

There a thousands of free text games. Check out https://ifdb.org for more.

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