Month: February 2017

For my first few attempts at playing Zork, I decided to just jump in and see how far I could get on my own; I refused to even draw a map in these first couple sessions, and didn’t use any reference materials or look anything up that wasn’t present in the manual.

My first hour playing the game was spend mostly stumbling around in the dark, so to speak. I started out getting lost in the forest for a bit, because I couldn’t figure out how to get to the open window leading into the house. Even through this confusion, I was able to figure out the most basic controls rather quickly; for instance, if a tree in the forest had low hanging branches, I knew immediately that I must be able to climb it. Eventually I made my way into the house, and again the controls here were pretty intuitive. I got a bunch of items, figured out that I needed to move the rug, open the trap door, etc. Then things got a bit trickier.

I kept running into enemies—the troll and thief primarily—and backtracking because I wasn’t sure how to fight them. I found that if I did use the command “fight”, I always ended up losing.  I kept trying to find different ways to go or different things to do, but obviously there is no way past the troll without fighting him, the forest seemed to lead to nowhere, and in my first round of play the thief was in the artist’s studio, so I couldn’t explore that area either. Eventually I fought the troll to the bitter end just to see what would happen; the game did something weird and I ended up not being able to continue, so I ended my session there.

This play through was indeed frustrating, and I often found myself feeling like I was stumbling around blindly in the dark. I hope that I will find Zork more fun as I continue to play and learn from my mistakes, but I’m concerned that as the narrative continues to become more complex I will find the game more frustrating than rewarding. I suppose we’ll see; I’ve never tried to make it through a text-based narrative experience before, so I really have no idea what the puzzles will be like or if I’ll be able to solve them without some sort of help. I hope to not consult a manual, but I might need to further down the road.

Zork again reminds me (much in the same way Civilization did) as to why “play” and “fun” are so difficult to define as discussed by Huizinga, Caillois, etc. Yes, I’m playing a game – but am I really enjoying myself? Probably not, if I’m finding myself so frustrated and unable to feel like I’m making any progress. While “play” doesn’t necessarily have to be “fun”, I do think some sense of accomplishment tends to come from it – without that, what’s the point?

For this first blog, I chose to read the gameplay manual in order to get a sense of the creators of the game as well as the lore of the game universe. I found the first few pages – dictating a brief history of “The Great Underground Empire” – rather amusing and also progressively sillier as I continued reading.

I found the humor continued into the instructional part of the manual. albeit to a lessor degree. I also found it interesting that the creators chose to give direct advice in the opening statement of the manual. In the second paragraph, they say “you’d better equip yourself with a source of light…and weapons…” because “some of the inhabitants are unfriendly – especially the thief, a skilled pickpocket and ruthless opponent” (11). Essentially the manual tells the player who to look out for before they’re even seeking that specific information. It does make me wonder if the manual is attempting to mislead the player in any way in these opening paragraphs, although the nature of the information provided makes this seem unlikely.

Continuing through the manual, I especially liked the “Tips for Novices” section. While I approached Civilization with the thought that I would – at least for the first few play throughs – try to figure out the game solely by playing it on my own, a manual such as this one would have been much appreciated. Also, since the inherent nature of interactive fiction makes it visually more akin to reading a book (in that you must imagine events for yourself as you read the text on the screen), some direction in regards to playing is appreciated. I found the advice regarding directions especially useful, since a novice might assume that to backtrack they only have to type the opposite of direction they used to get to their present location (this is not always the case, apparently – a fact I was not aware of).

I’m really not entirely sure how I feel about playing a game lacking in visuals. It seems if I enjoy reading (which I do) I should also enjoy this experience, but I don’t know if that will necessarily be the case or not. I tend to be a very visual person, so not being able to see the world around me will probably confound me for a bit until I get used to it. But, if the narrative is interesting I think I’ll still enjoy the experience…nothing can be quite so bad as I found Civilization, anyway – especially with the manual close at hand!