playing zork on commodore 64 was one of the most exhilarating and frustrating experiences of my childhood. calling zork an “interactive fiction computer game” is really just a lame way of trying to sexy up what is on paper a very bland and simple concept - its a text game. it reminds me of those early computer psychologist programs, where they tricked people into thinking that their computer-facilitated therapy was being conducted by a real person when it was actually just an evil computer program called eliza.

hands down the best thing about this game is that there were very limited instructions that came with it - you weren’t given an exhaustive list of text commands, so most of the fun in the game came from trying out different verbs and seeing what it did and didn’t respond to. i never got very far with zork, i didn’t have the patience for it. but the concept excited me so much. i wanted to design my own text adventures.

you can play it online here, or (if you want to get serious) you can download it to your computer here so you can play it anytime, save your game etc. you know i think i had eliza on my commodore 64 too, actually… she warped me, i guess