Your greatest challenge lies ahead- and downwards: Let's Play Zork!

I've heard worst ideas. I'll leave the coffin for now and head back to the house to retrieve the canary.



I can not believe that worked! I always thought this puzzle was under-clued. Aside from the fact that you can hear birdsong in the forest and that the canary sings a tune when wind it there's nothing to indicate that doing so in the forest will net you a treasure. It's so obscure that I've gone this whole LP without even mentioning it as a puzzle to solve and had to invent a contrivance to get it on that list. Sierra-esque indeed.

Beautiful, and yet oh so plain. The bauble scores me a single solitary point. Depositing it into the case earns another. Worthwhile!

Puzzles:
A mysterious temple.
A trapped coffin.

Inventory:
A screwdriver
A wrench
A Matchbook
A brass bell
Two Candles
A Black Book
A torch (providing light)
A brown sack
The brown sack contains:
A lunch
A sword
An air pump
A troll's axe
A stiletto
A shovel


Treasures:
A scepter decorated with a rainbow of gems
A chest full of jewels
A bag chock full of golden coins
A beautiful painting
A jewel encrusted bear-shaped egg
A wind-up canary
A silver chalice
A crystal trident
A jade figurine
A sapphire bracelet
A pot filled to the brim with gold
A large and unexceptional emerald
A beautiful and unexceptional scarab
A crystal skull (human, not alien)
A platinum bar (bar bar bar)
A boring ol' huge diamond
A beautiful plain brass bauble.

Your score is 319 (total of 350 points). This gives you the rank of Master.

Deaths: 11 (Grue fang, self-stabbed, troll axed, exploded-up, cyclops eaten, stiletto sliced x3, rusty knife'd, fell through a rainbow, rafted over a waterfall)

So at this point in time you need to get the coffin out of the temple... that's a tricky one. You still have the shovel, is there any chance you can widen the hole to get to the cave?

After skimming over the past entries I found something interesting. In the Slide Room there was an inscription saying "Granite Wall" and is the Temple is also a Granite Wall... so I'm thinking maybe you can do something with said wall. Check for secret passages?

(Yes, I'm guessing like crazy, I've never gotten very far in Zork)

I initially read this as "I ate bauble".

So... do that.

There was also a granite wall in the treasure room! This idea is going places.

That mysterious temple is so very mysterious... Who built it, and why? And why is there an altar in it? Who put a pair of candles and a book with only two legible pages on the altar? Why have we not tried using the altar in some fashion? Maybe a blood sacrifice or something? Maybe you can open it, like the Ark of the Covenant. (Hey, after that bit of Sierra moon logic with the songbird, anything's possible, right?)

Not a bad idea. They are the only two granite walls I've come across. And if they're anything like the mirror rooms there might be a connection.

Hmmm... nothing. The other's in the slide room you say? Let's go check it out.

So the wall in this room isn't granite. But there must be some significance to them if someone bothered to etch these words. Now I know I've seen another granite wall somewhere else. Guess I'll just have to wander around till I find it.

Thanks Nodal, I can always count on you to remember tedious details. Oh hey, here I am back in the Thief's treasure room.

And there's the granite wall! However nothing happens when I touch this one either. The other one's in the temple... It couldn't be as simple as it seems, right?

It is. Simply saying the name of the corresponding room transports me there. I guess that explains how the thief got to his lair so quickly when I found it. Using the mystical power of granite I am now able to get the coffin out of the temple.

Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrfffffffffffff!

But first!


Oh... sad. If only it was a zinc bauble.

In any case, I heft up the coffin, and granite wall it to the treasure room, and then haul it up to the case.

This is another under clued and lame puzzle. However, as Sky Render suggested, there is an alternate solution. One thing I didn't show off is what happens when you die. Rather than the RESTORE, RESTART, UNDO, or QUIT options that have become so commonplace you are instead resurrected as a spirit. While a ghost you can still move around but you can't pick up anything or interact with the scenery. To return to the living you have to pray at the alter, which restores you to life in the forest, and scatters your inventory all around. I've never bothered with this bit as 10 times out of 10 it's easier just to RESTORE. Praying works when you're alive as well, and doing so will transport you to the forest. Plus praying at an alter is a little more logical than saying the name of a room with a similar wall.

I put the coffin in the case (well, not in in it. Next to it at least), along with the torch for a combined 29 points (also, I got 10 for picking up the coffin). And with these last few points I'm at a total of 350! I am the point king! Emperor Point! (What the heck is a "point"!?)



That is one fine looking set of treasures. Welp! I've got what I came here for. I guess I should figure out a way to get these to Port Foozle where I can pawn them for my weight in Zorkmids.

Who said that?! A final secret? Hmm... I guess I should look closer.

That wasn't in there before... was it?



I guess I could go check it out. It's not like the treasures are going anywhere.



My nose for treasure tells me that there's more in the barrow. Tempting... but I don't need to find anymore. I'm set for life. To go down there would be greedy and most likely dangerous. ...On the other hand... treasure.

Treasure...
Security...
Treasure...
Security...

...



And there you have it. Zork! It's the game that cemented the Adventure genre. Colossal Cave Adventure might have been first, but Zork, with it's sophisticated interpreter and Z-Machine (which allowed the game to be ported to any home computer system), was the influential refinement. From Maniac Mansion to Myst to Machinarium, they all owe their existence to Zork. It's also responsible for kickstarting a brand new storytelling medium. And one that, though while still in it's infancy, has produced some very fine stories indeed.

That being said, it is a very archaic game. While the parser is robust, it still leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of actions aren't implemented and being told that there was "nothing remarkable" about every treasure destroys the excitement of finding them. The setting isn't very coherent and feels less like an actual place and more like a mis-mash of random ideas... which is exactly what it is. A lot of the puzzles are nonsensical and poorly clued, and it's very easy to put the game into an un-winable state. I ended up playing though the game five or so times during this Let's Play. I was hurrying through and kept making stupid mistakes. The year and a half break there was caused because I turned off the lamp before dropping it and moving into the machine room. Too late I realized I wouldn't be able to find it in the dark to turn it back on. And since it was trapped behind the gas room I wouldn't be able to get back to it with any of the other light sources. I was so pissed about having to go through the game AGAIN that I ended up abandoning the thread. Sorry about that.

The good news is that it get's better. Zork II is better written, more fun to play, and simply more zorkian. We'll explore the lands beyond the barrow in just a few months. Until then, happy zorking!

Hurrah Zork!

I really loved this one, Loki. I'm so happy you came back and finished it. The crayon drawings were absolutely sublime.

Loki this was a great LP! Also I HELPED SOLVE A PUZZLE AND YOU CAN'T TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME.

Thanks guys, I'm very happy you liked it! I'm interested if Foxeris actually put two and two together about the granite walls on his own or if he was just playing along.

Also, thanks Sky Render for playing along and helping drive this LP to completion.

Nice to know my crazy idea worked

This has been a great LP of a classic game, and your right Zork really codified a lot of things about text adventure games and really improved on what Colossal Cave did.

Your illustrations helped make this LP ever better, adding a nice vibe and texture to the game. It's a great addition, thanks for talking the time to do them.

It's going to be a bit of a wait for Zork II, but it should be worth it!

Mostly I got lucky. I was looking for the description of the temple and saw the "Granite Wall" comment in passing, so I twiged on it when I saw the description.

Oh, and if I may triple post for a little Coda, you should take a listen to the Zork walk through song.

Thank you for finishing! I've enjoyed all your Plays, particularly the art that goes along with them.

Did the original Zork always end saying that it was the first in a trilogy? These days that angle's all too common, but it's pretty gutsy for an early text adventure to advertise sequels.

Anyway, this was a fun read. Love those illustrations you drew of your adventure.

I knew the last two treasures were going to cause problems. The rest can all sort of be logically deduced, but the bauble and the coffin are some of the first moon logic puzzles in any adventure game. It's quite telling that the former was an inspiration for Sierra to basically replicate the solution wholesale in King's Quest VI. The latter can only really be figured out if you stumble upon the fact that the altar works the way it does (or if you have a strange penchant for calling out the names of rooms where a particular type of similar wall is; that's almost as stupid as the "echo" solution in the loud room).

Someone may come in and correct me on this (or.. check wikipedia, I guess) but from what I recall:

The original Zork game was built to run on a university mainframe, where there was (relatively) a lot more disk space. When it was released for home computers, it was split into three games. So it wasn't advertising a sequel so much as the next chapter, which was already written.

While I am disappointed that my Bauble idea didn't work, I am pleased to see the LP come to a conclusion.

YAY!

Correct. But I was also playing the (relatively) recent Revision 88 from 1983. I'm not sure how the original home port ended.

Stopping in slightly late to say congrats on finishing an awesome art-enhanced LP. This job was a success!

I concur with everybody: THIS LP ROCKED! The crayon drawings, the narration...man, this kicked ass. I eagerly await the inevitable Zork II LP.

The images in this LP are bad but I rehosted them anyway, sorry.

I missed this the first time around and it was a delight. Thank you.