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?