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How often do you see a serial number at the beginning of a game? |
Quick Info | |
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Reviewed by: | Mark Goninon |
Developer: | Infocom |
Publisher: | Infocom |
Release Date: | 1982 |
Time played: | 2 hours (incl. reading time) |
Best in the Trilogy (apparently)
The original Zork was intended to be a much larger game but the decision was made to split the game into three titles: Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz and the title that we cover in this review: Zork III: The Dungeon Master. More than 130,000 copies of Zork III were sold by 1986, and the first three episodes of Zork sold 786,000 copies by early 1989: not a bad run for a trilogy of 1980s games.
Contemporary magazines were generally positive about the game, with Softalk and Creative Computing naming Zork III the best in the trilogy although PC World claimed its puzzles could occasionally be "frustrating". Some publications went even further with their praise, with K-Power (an insert in Family Computing magazine) saying that Zork III was "the most intelligent text game for a microcomputer we've seen" (you know it's an old publication when they call a "PC" a "microcomputer") and The Addison-Wesley Book of Atari Software 1984 saying that Zork III was "perhaps the most entertaining of the three" and "a highwater mark for subtlety and logic".
So, the Zork games were kind of a big deal back in the early 80s, and to some, Zork III was the best of the bunch, but does it still hold up today in 2025? Is it worth investing the time to play this?
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Wait, you actually want me to enter the frigid lake? |
Am I on the Right Track? Nope.
As with the previous episodes of Zork, I played the GOG version of the game and was hoping a manual would explain to me how to play the game. Unfortunately, just like previous times, the GOG version of the game seems to be a bit short on anything helpful. There is a map included but no manual. The game did come with a few digital versions of "feelies" such as a FroBozzCo Annual Report, Shareholder Letter and Shareholder Certificate. While this stuff is nice from a historical perspective, it would obviously be much better if you had the actual physical items.
Due to the lack of a manual, I again went into the game blind and tried my best to see how far I could go without any guidance whatsoever. There doesn't seem to be as many ways to die in this Zork when compared to previous ones and the one time I did die in this, it almost seemed like it was intentional, a bit like how the Nameless One is resurrected in Planescape: Torment; the game even allowed me to recover my items that were strewn all over the place. It would turn out this was a major red herring though as you're not really meant to die in this which means this was the first time I was mislead by the game and I was also disappointed the puzzle was in no way related to the ones in Planescape: Torment.
At another point in the game, I came across a machine that had a seat and a dial you could set. I assumed this was a time machine but was curious what would happen if you set the dial to 0 although when you do this, it just quits the game. I tried the number 1, and this also quit the game. I wasn't going to hang around to try every combination and since I had already spent some time exploring with only a sword, some bread and a chest to show for it, I decided it was time to confer with… THE DREADED WALKTHROUGH (Dun dun DUUUUUN!)
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Oh come on text parser, don't be coy with me, you know what I want to do... |
You are likely to be eaten by interactive fiction tropes
So, like previous Zork episodes, I again followed a walkthrough, and again, I'm so glad I did. If there's one good thing that can be said about playing these games, it makes me understand why early Sierra adventure games were so damn difficult: it's because they were heavily inspired by all the tropes and typical gameplay associated with interactive fiction. Having played a few Zork games and early Sierra adventures, there are several frustrating puzzle types that seem to resurface over and over again. I'll just go through three that featured prominently in Zork III.
Firstly, there's the hidden exit puzzle. Usually when you enter a scene, you are told where the exits are and which direction you have to go in order to use them (e.g. "there is a door to the north and a bridge to the west"). However, sometimes the game doesn't tell you about all the possible exits. Sometimes you have to guess that there are other ways you can go. For example, in this game, there is one room where you come across a lake. The room doesn't offer any hints that there is anything particularly important about this lake or the ability to traverse it. However, you are expected to ENTER the lake in order to progress to another area. So remember, anytime you see a body of water in an interactive fiction or early adventure game, either try to cross it or dive into it. It may be critical to finishing the game!
Secondly, there is the correctly composed sentence puzzle! Thankfully, I think Sierra adventures are generally pretty forgiving in this regard (most of the time) but Zork definitely is not. At one point in Zork III you need to use the infamous grue repellent on yourself but after trying several combinations such as "apply grue repellent on self" or "apply grue repellent on me" or "apply grue repellent", all of them ended with the text parser not understanding me. The correct phrase is "apply grue repellent to me", not "on me", but "to me". It's a phrase I probably wouldn't have guessed and there's another instance of this type of puzzle when you're meant to greet a sailor: "greet man", "greet sailor", "talk to man", "talk to sailor", "wave at sailor", etc. are all things that don't work and fail to get his attention. However, when you type the phrase "hello sailor", it somehow works. Again, never would have guessed.
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Waiting for time to pass seems to be a thing in interactive fiction games |
Finally, there is the waiting around for something to happen puzzle! Later adventure games would do away with waiting around, and would rely more on triggers in order to progress events in the game. Early adventure games and interactive fiction relied a lot on random chance and waiting around before a die roll determined whether you were going to meet somebody or not. This means in order to succeed, you would need to conduct research by visiting every room in the game and just typing "wait" a few times to see if anything important happened. It's not always obvious where you have to wait, such as one room where a ship happens to sail past despite there being no dock or port nearby. Other times, you have to wait for someone to arrive so the correct sequence of events is triggered such as waiting for someone to help you lift a chest (if you take the chest instead, the correct course of action won't trigger and you'll enter a "dead man walking" scenario). This reminds me of the puzzle in Space Quest I when you're haggling with the guy wanting to buy your skimmer.
The rest of the game's puzzles seemed to be on the difficult side but were at least actual puzzles. Some of the puzzles would have benefited from a graphical representation of them instead of being described via text but that's interactive fiction for you.
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Zork III is similar to previous episodes in that it has fiendishly difficult puzzles by today's standards thanks to "dead man walking" scenarios, hidden exits, and the occasional need to carefully construct the correct sentence. These games rewarded those that diligently spent hours researching all the ways you could interact with each room and then finding the correct path through all these disparate scenarios until you came out the other side. Is it better than the previous Zork games? Probably, but not by much. I couldn't get through this game without a walkthrough and I suspect many who didn't grow up on interactive fiction games would be in the same boat. As with adventure games, using a walkthrough isn't ideal and takes away some of the fun so I'd recommend playing this game blind but only if you have previous experience with interactive fiction games. Also recommended to those wanting to play it for historical purposes, but do so with a walkthrough. |
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