Game Design - Week 4

Zork I

Zork, a text based adventure game was released around 1977 - 1979. Made by a few members of the 'Dynamic Modelling Group'  at MIT, their goal was to create a game that distinguished itself by giving it's ability to tell a sophisticated story and provide a rich game world. 

An example starting screen for Zork

To move around the game world, the character must input verbs like 'move north' to move the character north. Other commands such as, look will show what's in the room (e.g. A desk with a note on it) or eat will have the player eat what it wants (very funny in some situations). 

It's probably for the best...

The game is only limited by the players imagination. The game doesn't hold your hand like most modern games, but instead tires to create situations you really need to think about.

From here, it can be said the core mechanic is the ability to move a character around the world through key words. The goal for the game wasn't clear and after over an hour of playing, no real progress was made; however, through further playing, it was discovered that to 'win', treasures had to be found throughout the world - 15 to be exact. 

The game also provides a move count, so for those veteran players, they have the choice to finish the game with the lowest possible moves. 

The game was incredibly challenging. Some commands wouldn't provide the results, 'go through window' was declined, so had to say 'climb through window' or climb down trapdoor was rejected, instead had to input down. Once the commands were easier to understand the game become more fluid.

The overlaying story wasn't super clear, apart from you started next to a mailbox, there wasn't a prelude to what was here. This wasn't necessarily a bad choice, as it added further mystery to the game.