After I killed the troll, I was excited what else the world of Zork had to offer. After exploring more caves and rooms with nothing really in them, I found out that north, south, east, and west were not the only directional options that I had to choose from. I had the options in between as well. So I started going southwest, northeast, etc. Eventually I found the maze. I found it…and I couldn’t escape it. My first few attempts resulted in either being trapped in the maze with no way out or being stuck in the room I was in before I had entered the maze. I first tried random directions, but that had absolutely no success whatsoever. Then I tried going the same direction until I got the message that couldn’t go any farther. I had once heard that all mazes can be escaped by staying on the left wall, so I thought that maybe a similar mode had been implemented in the programming of the maze in Zork. I tried seeing if staying west would work and guess what? It didn’t. At all. Stupid freaking maze.
As I am exploring this game I’m trying to understand how the mechanics work and what is allowed and what’s not. So far I know that I can take things and use directions. What I don’t know is what certain interactions are possible when I use things. Basically if I encounter a new scenario, I won’t know whether or not I can use an item until I’ve tried it. If an item does work, I don’t know what the consequences will be. For instance, when I fed the troll, he ate it but it didn’t improve my situation at all and I lost those items. In this way, it’s a cool function that there is genuine risk involved when one plays this game.