Zork I
Zork was originally an adventure game written on the DEC PDP-10 between 1977 and 1979, based heavily on the "original" Colossal Cave Adventure game, and the authors of Zork subsequently founded the company Infocom, and sold the game for play on personal computers.
Because personal computers of the time were so much smaller (in terms of memory) than the PDP-10, the original Zork was split into three sections and sold as Zork I, Zork II and Zork III.
These are some notes on playing Zork I.
Objective
Collect treasures and place them in the trophy case. There are a total of 350 points available in the game, mostly awarded either for collecting the treasures or for entering certain locations.
Once you've collected all the items, you get given a map and directions which will take you to Zork II.
I've found the following so far (points for getting them, or doing things with them, are shown in brackets):
- Bag of Coins (10+5)
- Clockwork Canary (1)
- Crystal Skull (10+10)
- Crystal Trident
- Diamond (10)
- Flaming Ivory Torch (14+13+6)
- Gold Coffin
- Jade Figurine (5)
- Jewel-encrusted Egg (5+5)
- Painting (4+6)
- Platinum Bar (10+5)
- Sapphire-encrusted Bracelet (5)
- Scarab
- Sceptre (4)
- Silver Chalice
- Trunk with Jewels (15+5)
Note that some items of treasure are also useful in solving puzzles in the game.
Apparently, I have yet to find the following:
- Brass Bauble
- Large Emerald
- Pot of Gold (presumably at the end of the rainbow?)
The following items have some purpose in completing the game, so I assume they are not also treasure:
- Boat
- Bottle of Water
- Brass Bell
- Candles
- Clove of Garlic
- Coil of Rope
- Hand-operated Pump
- Large Black Book
- Lunch
- Pile of Coal
- Screwdriver
- Shovel
- Sword
- Wrench
I'm assuming that the following are not treasures (because no points were awarded for acquiring them), although I've not (yet) found a use for them:
- Axe
- Broken Timber
- Matchbook
- Nasty-looking Knife
- Rusty Knife
- Useless Lantern
Points
You get varying numbers of points for doing different things. In order of significance and alphabet, the ones I've found are:
- 1: Put (broken) canary in case
- 4: Get painting
- 4: Get sceptre
- 5: Get bracelet
- 5: Get egg
- 5: Get figurine
- 5: Enter east-west passage
- 5: Put bag in case
- 5: Put bar in case
- 5: Put bracelet in case
- 5: Put egg in case
- 5: Put figurine in case
- 5: Put trunk in case
- 6: Put painting in case
- 6: Put torch in case
- 10: Enter house
- 10: Get bag of coins
- 10: Get diamond
- 10: Get platinum bar
- 10: Get skull
- 10: Put diamond in case
- 10: Put skull in case
- 13: Retrieve torch
- 14: Get torch
- 15: Get trunk
- 25: Enter cellar
Total found so far: 208 (of 350).
Note that any points you earn for putting something into the trophy case are removed from your score if you take the item out again, so if it's one of the things you need for some other purpose, use it first and then store it away.
PS: You lose 10 points for dying.
The Maze
The maze has a lot of rooms, several one-way passages, and plenty of routes which are two-way, but not in the expected direction.
You'll need to drop things and wander about in order to map the maze, and a thief will come along and steal them while you're not looking. I reckon it's impossible to map the maze without losing vital items in the process.
However, my impression is that once you know where you're going, and if you don't leave things lying around behind you, the thief won't bother you.
Note, however, that the maze is not the only place he operates in - he may come along almost anywhere in the game (although I've never encountered him above ground - maybe he's just heliophobic?), and do a variety of things including:
- go away again
- look threatening but do nothing
- take things from a nearby room
- take things from you (including, sometimes, your source of light)
- kill you
Note, however, that items stolen by the thief simply get dropped somewhere else in the game, so you stand a (reasonable?) chance of finding them again.
There is one location in the game where you are guaranteed to encounter him - if he's not there already, he arrives as soon as you enter the room.
Maps
I think I've found 106 locations so far. I've read in more than one place that there are 110 locations in total…
The map does not indicate rooms or connections where you may need to do something, or have something with you, in order to make further progress. Finding out about that is part of the game, and this is not a walkthrough.
The battery-powered lamp starts to get a bit dim after 250 moves or so, and sooner or later it will die completely, so either you need to be pretty efficient in getting around the place, collecting things and solving puzzles, or else you need to find an alternative source of illumination (and don't forget to turn the lamp off when you do, otherwise it'll still run out of power, but for no good reason).