Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

This is my finale post for Zork III, so make sure you’ve read my other posts about Zork III before this one.

From The Infocom Gallery.

While I had discovered the area of the game with a “beam room” and so forth about 40% of the way through my gameplay…

>n
Beam Room
You are in the middle of a long north-south corridor whose walls are polished stone. A narrow red beam of light crosses the room at the north end, inches above the floor.
The corridor continues north and south.

…I remembered the beam being the start puzzle to the endgame of mainframe Zork, so I wanted to save it for after I had everything else taken care of first. There’s some interesting (and slightly confusing) aspects the game has for people who enter this section early (which I’ll get into later), but for my own game I only had two things left to do.

First was a secret action which I got essentially by luck. When you fall into the lake any items you are carrying drop in. I originally got the feeling that such items were lost forever, but you can dive in and find them:

>d
Underwater
You are below the surface of the lake. It turns out that the lake is quite shallow and the bottom is only a few feet below you. Considering the frigid temperature of the water, you should probably not plan an extended stay. The lake bottom is sandy and a few hearty plants and algae live there.
There is a lamp here.
Out of the corner of your eye, a small, shiny object appears in the sand. A moment later, it is gone!

(Mind you, the lamp is ruined if you do this with that item specifically, although you can make do with the torch.)

The “small, shiny object” is a medallion, one of the items you need. Rather frustratingly, there is a 50% chance picking it up will fail, and if you stay in the water too long you will drown. So there is a chance for some people they would assume there is some extra puzzle other than just typing GET SHINY over and over. I died after 5 failed attempts, which has about a 3% chance of happening. Game designers, would you really be happy with 3 out of 100 people being in this circumstance? (I know, I’ve gone over this before, and it is a flaw I don’t see in modern games nearly so often, but everyone once in a while it does happen.)

The last remaining issue was the battle with the hooded figure.

From the Zork User Group hintbook, via the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

I was able to kill the figure entirely through raw persistence, which was a puzzle in itself (my first combat took, without exaggeration, about 50 turns, and it is possible to straight-up die if you’re unlucky) but that still felt fairly unsatisfying even though it caused my score to go up by 1.

I ended up needing to check hints. I think I get (by reverse engineering later events) how this was supposed to be puzzled out, but at least at the time I didn’t manage.

>hit man with sword
A good parry! Your sword wounds the hooded figure!
The figure is hurt, and its strength appears to be fading.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>get hood
The hooded figure, though recovering from wounds, is strong enough to force you back.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>hit man with sword
A good slash, but it misses by a mile.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>hit man with sword
A good stroke, but it’s too slow.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>hit man with sword
A quick stroke catches the hooded figure off guard! Blood trickles down the figure’s arm!
The figure appears to be badly hurt and defenseless.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>get hood
You slowly remove the hood from your badly wounded opponent and recoil in horror at the sight of your own face, weary and wounded. A faint smile comes to the lips and then the face starts to change, very slowly, into that of an old, wizened person. The image fades and with it the body of your hooded opponent. The cloak remains on the ground.

As the early part of the excerpt indicates, this is only possible at the exact right moment. I tested it multiple times and I’m fairly sure I’ve also had a situation where it the figure went from not-wounded-enough straight to dead after a good sword blow, making the hood-nabbing impossible. I had tried every iteration of yielding or stopping the combat I could think, so I had the right concept, just the wrong action.

I think the point of the puzzle was to suss out, from the description of the Dungeon Master (which is given fairly explicitly on death)…

He is dressed simply in a hood and cloak, wearing a few simple jewels, carrying something under one arm, and leaning on a wooden staff. A single key, as if to a massive prison cell, hangs from his belt.

…that we are supposed to try to match; that is, we need the hood to complete our ensemble in the first place.

Clearly, the authorial goal (I think Marc Blank is the person making the choices here as opposed to Lebling, but I’m not sure) is to intentionally have a bit of the flair of randomness which was admittedly present back in Zork I to craft a puzzle around. Having circumstances, say, where exactly five turns of hitting are needed before the action, would feel a bit mechanical a suck some of the appeal out of the combat system. The game also is extremely forgiving on death, so in a ludological sense needing to have a “rematch” with the hooded figure may be an intended part of the narrative.

The end result of the two resolutions was give me:

A wooden staff
A strange key
A vial
A cloak (being worn)
A hood (being worn)
A sword
A lamp
A very ancient book
A golden ring (being worn)
A golden amulet (being worn)
A torch

I also had a chest (too heavy to be carried at the same time as the items above) but I used it to immediately solve a puzzle in the end game.

Beam Room
You are in the middle of a long north-south corridor whose walls are polished stone. A narrow red beam of light crosses the room at the north end, inches above the floor.
The corridor continues north and south.

>put chest in beam
The beam is now interrupted by a chest lying on the floor.

This allows pushing a button to the south, which consequently allows entering a “mirror room” to the north.

>push button
Click. Snap!

>n
Beam Room
There is a chest here.

>n
Hallway
This is a part of the long hallway. The east and west walls are dressed stone. In the center of the hall is a shallow stone channel. In the center of the room the channel widens into a large hole around which is engraved a compass rose.
The hallway continues to the south.
A large mirror fills the north side of the hallway.
The mirror is mounted on a panel which has been opened outward.

>n
Inside Mirror
You are inside a rectangular box of wood whose structure is rather complicated. Four sides and the roof are filled in, and the floor is open.

As you face the side opposite the entrance, two short sides of carved and polished wood are to your left and right. The left panel is mahogany, the right pine. The wall you face is red on its left half and black on its right. On the entrance side, the wall is white opposite the red part of the wall it faces, and yellow opposite the black section. The painted walls are at least twice the length of the unpainted ones. The ceiling is painted blue.

In the floor is a stone channel about six inches wide and a foot deep. The channel is oriented in a north-south direction. In the exact center of the room the channel widens into a circular depression perhaps two feet wide. Incised in the stone around this area is a compass rose.

Running from one short wall to the other at about waist height is a wooden bar, carefully carved and drilled. This bar is pierced in two places. The first hole is in the center of the bar (and thus the center of the room). The second is at the left end of the room (as you face opposite the entrance). Through each hole runs a wooden pole.

The pole at the left end of the bar is short, extending about a foot above the bar, and ends in a hand grip. The pole has been dropped into a hole carved in the stone floor.

The long pole at the center of the bar extends from the ceiling through the bar to the circular area in the stone channel. This bottom end of the pole has a T-bar a bit less than two feet long attached to it, and on the T-bar is carved an arrow. The arrow and T-bar are pointing west.

How was one supposed to work out interrupting the beam was needed? Even though I solved the puzzle right away I have no earthly idea. I remembered the puzzle from Zork mainframe and applied that solution. Importantly, the mainframe version of the puzzle had a different feel to it: you have your inventory reduced to the iconic sword and lamp, but you need to interrupt the beam! I remember feeling a pang at leaving the sword behind; so even though the puzzle didn’t have good motivation, at least it led to a good narrative moment. Here, the empty chest (or likely a few other item choices, like the empty grue repellent can) hardly makes for the same poignance.

The “Inside Mirror” room is just as headache-inducing as I remembered. 12 years ago when I wrote about the scene I compared it to Myst, writing “Myst is really awkward and difficult described as text”. To sum up what’s going on:

The room is a vehicle that can shift around on a track. The track only goes south/north.

The short pole is sort of an anchor that keeps the vehicle from turning. You need to raise it first to be able to get rotation buttons to work.

The red and yellow panels are buttons which both rotate clockwise when pushed.

The black and white panels rotate counterclockwise when pushed.

The mahogany panel moves forward, and the pine panel opens the vehicle.

The long pole and arrow indicate direction.

With these functions sussed out the solution is pretty straightforward: lift the short pole, turn to the north, drop the short pole, move to the end of the track, lift the short pole again, spin so the exit is on the north side, and open. Voila.

>PUSH PINE
The pine wall swings open.

>N
As you leave, the door swings shut.
Dungeon Entrance
You are in a north-south hallway which ends, to the north, at a large wooden
door.
The south side of the room is divided by a wooden wall into small hallways to
the southeast and southwest.
The wooden door has a barred panel in it at about head height. The door itself
is closed.
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.

Now, anyone familiar with the game might know I skipped over something: the Guardians of Zork.

These are statues standing on either side of the track that will wallop you if they see you, which can happen if the vehicle is wobbly (that is, you don’t stabilize with the short pole). I only found this after after the fact looking at people writing about the game, though! The Guardians are meant to thwap anyone who they see, but if there is a stable mirror passing through it looks like they’re just seeing the other Guardian.

There’s a part that makes this even more confusing. Let’s suppose you’ve gone through this and find you haven’t completed all the tasks in the first part of the game. I’m guessing there’s a couple results based on the circumstances, but here’s one if you leave an item behind.

>knock on door
The knock reverberates along the hall. For a time it seems there will be no answer. Then you hear someone unlatching the small wooden panel. Through the bars of the great door, the wrinkled face of an old man appears. He looks you over with his keen, piercing gaze and then speaks gravely. “I have been waiting a long time for you, and you are nearly ready for the last test! I will remain here. When you feel you are ready, go to the secret door and ‘SAY “FROTZ OZMOO”‘! Go, now!” He starts to leave but turns back briefly and wags his finger in warning. “Do not forget the double quotes!” A moment later, you find yourself in the Button Room.
Your sword is no longer glowing.

This gives you a “teleport” command that now works to jump past the mirror altogether. However, you still can’t get back using the vehicle (at least from everything I’ve tried). The only way back through is to ignore the mirror vehicle and walk, on foot, past the Guardians.

>sw
Narrow Room
You are in a narrow room, whose east wall is a large mirror.
The opposite wall is solid rock.
Somewhat to the south, identical stone statues face each other from pedestals on opposite sides of the corridor. The statues represent Guardians of Zork, a military order of ancient lineage. They are portrayed as heavily armored warriors standing at ease, hands clasped around formidable bludgeons.
Your sword is no longer glowing.

>examine guardians
The guardians are quite impressive. I wouldn’t get in their way if I were you!

>se
You can’t go that way.

>s
The Guardians awake, and in perfect unison, utterly destroy you with their stone bludgeons. Satisfied, they resume their posts.

**** You have died ****

This is doable if you’ve got the flask from the sailor. The liquid will make you invisible for a turn, long enough to scoot by the Guardians safely. But there’s only one dose, so you need to use the FROTZ OZMOO in order to come back.

So we have a weird circumstance, where

a.) the flask is technically optional

b.) however, it is not optional for someone coming to visit the Dungeon Master early

c.) however, who would arrive at the Dungeon Master early and keep playing, rather than load a saved game?

Also! You can, weirdly enough, move the mirror vehicle a bit (you can’t ignore it entirely), get out of it, and then walk north past the Guardians on foot. This requires the invisibility again.

So the vial is intended to give a little extra flexibility — was the ability to use it to avoid finishing the mirror puzzle more or less inadvertent? The manner of obtaining it (saying HELLO SAILOR) I’ve already prodded at as a design flaw, but it works a little better if it considered optional. I still never found anywhere in Zork III to give a clue on the phrase, though.

Going back to the door, here’s what happens when you have done everything correctly and have all the relevant items. This means: hood, amulet, ring, key, staff, book.

>knock on door
The knock reverberates along the hall. For a time it seems there will be no answer. Then you hear someone unlatching the small wooden panel. Through the bars of the great door, the wrinkled face of an old man appears. After a moment, he starts to smile broadly. He disappears for an instant and the massive door opens without a sound. The old man motions and you feel yourself drawn toward him.
“I am the Master of the Dungeon!” he booms. “I have been watching you closely during your journey through the Great Underground Empire. Yes!,” he says, as if recalling some almost forgotten time, “we have met before, although I may not appear as I did then.” You look closely into his deeply lined face and see the faces of the old man by the secret door, your “friend” at the cliff, and the hooded figure. “You have shown kindness to the old man, and compassion toward the hooded one. I have seen you display patience in the puzzle and trust at the cliff. You have demonstrated strength, ingenuity, and valor. However, one final test awaits you. Now! Command me as you will, and complete your quest!”

Narrow Corridor
You are in a narrow north-south corridor. At the south end is a door and at the north end is an east-west corridor. The door is closed.
The dungeon master is quietly leaning on his staff here.
Your sword has begun to glow very brightly.

The way the game is structured (especially with the ability to loop back) this is really where the endgame for Zork III starts, as opposed to starting at the beam with Zork mainframe. It is consequently fairly short and feels odd in a plot-drama sense.

brief aside on endgames of old school text adventures

Crowther/Woods Adventure had a simple, impossibly abstruse puzzle, but tried to make it a finale with a giant collection of items from the game and a giant explosion. Warp tried a very long impossibly complicated sequence of puzzles. It really seems like you’d optimally want something in the middle, something that is both a narrative and game climax, where the narrative speeds to some dramatic reckoning and the puzzles perhaps involve putting together prior insights but aren’t necessarily hard in order to keep things from getting driven into the ground. It is shockingly hard to find a game that has those two parts in combination. Hezarin managed to have a nice final showdown with a the titular wizard, but got absurdly hard. (Is the absurdly hard part a bad thing? Should the culmination actually be testing the most extreme puzzle skills?) The only game from All the Adventures so far that I think really stuck the landing is Level 9’s take on Adventure, which pushed hard on difficulty, true, but not absurdly so, had the cave slowly flooding for added drama, and included one of the best puzzles in the entire game (or all of 1982, even) in the form of “rescue all the elves”.

end aside

Mainframe Zork had a trivia quiz which seemed to encapsulate “include some element of all things from the journey before”. This gets understandably cut here, but without a replacement, it is just a single straightforward puzzle.

Here, the Dungeon Master follows you around and you can give him commands, like STAY or PUSH BUTTON. There’s a parapet by a cell door which is quickly recognizable as an elevator of sorts.

Parapet
You are standing behind a stone retaining wall which rims a large parapet overlooking a fiery pit. It is difficult to see through the smoke and flame which fills the pit, but it seems to be more or less bottomless. The pit itself is circular, about two hundred feet in diameter, and is fashioned of roughly hewn stone. The flames generate considerable heat, so it is rather uncomfortable standing here.
There is an object here which looks like a sundial. On it are an indicator arrow and (in the center) a large button. On the face of the dial are numbers 1 through 8. The indicator points to the number 1.
To the south, across a narrow corridor, is a prison cell.
The dungeon master follows you.

>master, stay
The dungeon master answers, “I will stay.”

>turn dial to 3
The dial now points to 3.

>s
North Corridor
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.

>s
Prison Cell
You are in a featureless prison cell. You can see an east-west corridor outside the open wooden door in front of you. Your view also takes in the parapet, and behind, a large, fiery pit.
The dungeon master is standing on the parapet, leaning on his wooden staff. His keen gaze is fixed on you and he looks somewhat tense, as if waiting for something to happen.
Your sword is no longer glowing.

>master, push button
“If you wish,” he replies.
Prison Cell
You are in a bare prison cell. Its wooden door is securely fastened, and you can see only flames and smoke through its small window.
You notice that the cell door is now closed.

This sequence here incidentally traps you. The thing to realize is to mess with the elevator first and find there is a special bronze door in the “cell” when you set the number to 4. Then go through the same sequence above, but while you are calling the the master from within the elevator, have him set the dial to 1 and only then push the button. Then you can pass through the bronze door:

Treasury of Zork
This is a large room, richly appointed in a style that bespeaks exquisite taste. To judge from its contents, it is the ultimate storehouse of the wealth of the Great Underground Empire.

There are chests here containing precious jewels, mountains of zorkmids, rare paintings, ancient statuary, and beguiling curios.

On one wall is an annotated map of the Empire, showing the locations of various troves of treasure, and of several superior scenic views.

On a desk at the far end of the room may be found stock certificates representing a controlling interest in FrobozzCo International, the multinational conglomerate and parent company of the Frobozz Magic Boat Co., etc.

As you gleefully examine your new-found riches, the Dungeon Master materializes beside you, and says, “Now that you have solved all the mysteries of the Dungeon, it is time for you to assume your rightly-earned place in the scheme of things. Long have I waited for one capable of releasing me from my burden!” He taps you lightly on the head with his staff, mumbling a few well-chosen spells, and you feel yourself changing, growing older and more stooped. For a moment there are two identical mages standing among the treasure, then your counterpart dissolves into a mist and disappears, a sardonic grin on his face.

For a moment you are relieved, safe in the knowledge that you have at last completed your quest in ZORK. You begin to feel the vast powers and lore at your command and thirst for an opportunity to use them.

Your potential is 7 of a possible 7, in 377 moves.

The puzzle is oddly simple to finish things off, but I also do appreciate it not requiring an absurd act either. However, I do remember being blown away by mainframe Zork’s ending, and not quite as much here.

The last sentence is remarkable. That was the ending?

I was stuck by it as a lens of sorts: here is a new art form, one raw and unrefined, with the potential to be serious and profound.

For me it was the most gratifying moment of playing Zork.

The thing about this is: the last sentence of mainframe Zork is not the same as Zork III. Mainframe ends at the sardonic grin. Zork III ends with “You begin to feel the vast powers and lore at your command and thirst for an opportunity to use them.”

This changes the tone drastically. The first almost seems like a cruel cosmic joke, with it left ambiguous just how happy the protagonist is about their situation. The second ending is much more explicit about the protagonist’s position, and it dampens the effect. I can see why it’d be more commercially desirable but I certainly would not call it “the most gratifying moment of playing Zork III”.

Let me round things out with two reviews or at least comments, one from the period and one recent. First, from the 1984 Kim Schuette Book of Adventure Games:

If you play this game the same way you play other adventures, you’ll never get anywhere. This time you must consider sensitivity, trust, and human compassion. Yes, educational value occurs here, as well as a lot of interesting puzzles, some of which have alternate solutions … The game pays superb attention to detail. Did you know, for example, that the chest is watertight?

Regarding “the same way you play other adventures”: from the perspective of 1982, this was something very, very, different. We’d certainly had games that interrogated the idea of killing monsters (including a direct parody of killing the troll from Zork in House of Thirty Gables) but the scene with the chest, which really doesn’t have a puzzle at all, and just demands you have the patience to allow yourself to get “ripped off” of the valuables in the chest, was nearly without precedent.

On the chest being waterproof: later versions of Zork III removed this, but the earlier versions let you fit the lamp in the chest. This allows for a solution to the dark dilemma where you put the lamp in the chest, close it, enter the lake, grab the chest from the lake, get out on the south side, open the chest and get the lamp, and then use the lamp to safely reach the key. (The dark rooms just don’t have a description, sadly.)

Here’s some quotes from Gold Machine’s coverage last year two years ago (god where did time go):

Zork III begins in a no less innovative way that challenges the amorality of the Zork trilogy as well as our own assumptions about adventure games. Unfortunately, Zork III: The Dungeon Master fails to escape the diminishing gravity of Dungeon. The result is a sputtering conclusion to the Zork trilogy.

I agree with the evaluation here: in their plot-essence, the new parts of the game stronger than the old parts. However, many of the new puzzles get foiled at least partly by random aspects, somewhat; even the chest puzzle has a random number of turns before the man first appears to offer the rope, so one player might leave the room too early while another would get the encounter even though they do the exact same commands. On the other hand, the elements from original Zork, despite lacking that random aspect, don’t add the same thematic gravitas.

On the other (other) hand Zork always had a feel of a ramshackle combination of parts, ideas jammed in at random, so it is a remarkable feat that Zork III managed a coherent theme at all, so I’m still able to admire the end product.

Now, this might normally be my goodbye to the Zork Trilogy, but I do still plan to return to the (relatively recently unearthed) 1977 source code to compare gameplay. I’d also like to take another shot at the weird Zork-clone that happened on PLATO systems that I wasn’t able to finish (and given the lack of information/hints on the Internet, nobody has been able to finish).

For now, though, I’ll going to do a one-shot visit to a game I can nearly guarantee you haven’t heard of before, followed by a return to Med Systems and the first-person adventure game Asylum II.

I’m quite nearly done with the game so I’ll sum up next time, but I wanted to devote a single post to one puzzle, as it is the most interesting of the game.

Last time I left off in a museum adjacent to a block-pushing puzzle, but had yet to describe exits to the north and east. Here’s where you end up if you go east from the museum:

Museum Entrance
This is the entrance to the Royal Museum, the finest and grandest in the Great Underground Empire. To the south, down a few steps, is the entrance to the Royal Puzzle and to the east, through a stone door, is the Royal Jewel Collection. A wooden door to the north is open and leads to the Museum of Technology. To the west is a great iron door, rusted shut. To its left, however, is a cleft in the rock providing a western route away from the museum.

>open stone door
The door is now open.

>e
Jewel Room
You are in a high-ceilinged chamber in the middle of which sits a tall, round steel cage, which is securely locked. In the middle of the cage is a pedestal on which sit the Crown Jewels of the Great Underground Empire: a sceptre, a jewelled knife, and a golden ring. A small bronze plaque, now tarnished, is on the cage.

From the Zork User Group map, via the Gallery of Undiscovered Entities.

The plaque, importantly, notes these are “Crown Jewels” presented to the museum by Dimwit Flathead, dedicated 777 GUE. The year has been mentioned quite a few times through the manuals for the game, including a library checkout sticker for this game.

The last checkout date above is 948; now look at the room to the north of the museum:

>n
Technology Museum
This is a large hall which hosted the technological exhibits of the Great Underground Empire. A door to the south is open.
Directly in front of you is a large golden machine, which has a seat with a console in front. On the console is a single button and a dial connected to a three-digit display which reads 948. The machine is suprisingly shiny and shows few signs of age.
A strange grey machine, shaped somewhat like a clothes dryer, is on one side of the room. On the other side of the hall is a powerful-looking black machine, a tight tangle of wires, pipes, and motors.
A plaque is mounted near the door. The writing is faded, however, and cannot be made out clearly. The two machines seem to be in bad shape, rusting in many spots.

I realized, after some thought, that the gold machine had to be a time machine. (Aside: it also then occured to me: is this how the blog Gold Machine got its name? And indeed it was, and I fortunately hadn’t checked the About page because it would have spoiled the puzzle.)

From the ZUG version of Invisiclues, via the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

The most immediate thing I then I wanted to try was jumping to 777, as mentioned on the plaque.

>turn dial to 777
The dial is set to 777.

>push button
Nothing seems to have happened.

>sit in chair
You are now in the gold machine.

>push button
You experience a brief period of disorientation. When your vision returns, you are confronted with a goodly number of particularly stupid-looking people dressed in peculiar uniform and pointing waffle-like objects in your general direction. One twists his waffle and you slump to the ground, dead.

** You have died **

Normally you get resurrected (in Zork III) or given a RESTORE/RESTART/etc. prompt (in some other Infocom games) but after the death message here you get directly kicked to the exit and the game interpreter quits. Clearly this is outside the realm of the Dungeon Master.

My next experiment was testing the year right before, 776, on the theory things might be built up but not fully. This turned out to be right, but before getting into that, I should mention the game is careful with detail:

– if you go any farther back than 776, you end up in solid rock, as the room hasn’t been dug out yet
– if you go any time form 777 to 882, you get the person shooting you with a waffle
– if you go to 883 or any year up to the present (948) you get essentially the same description as before, except the door leading in the museum has no break next to it
– if you go after 948, the cleft leading in the museum is described as having been filled in with rocks

Even though I essentially hit correctly immediately, I still checked these because I just was having fun with the simulation aspect of it and trying to see if anything new would show up. It is pretty rare in this era for an adventure to allow playing with one of the available items like a toy.

OK, let’s jump to 776 now:

>push button
You experience a brief period of disorientation. When your vision returns, your surroundings appear to have changed. From outside the door you hear the sounds of guards talking.
You notice that everything you were holding is gone!

The “everything you were holding is gone” means you can’t take items back in time. You will also (after enough turns) eventually get popped back into the present. The lack of items eliminates any outside-inventory solution to the puzzle.

If you wait a bit, the guards will eventually leave, usually.

>wait
Time passes…
You hear, from outside the door, guards marching away, their voices fading. After a few moments, a booming crash signals the close of what must be a tremendous door. Then there is silence.

I say usually, because sometimes by random chance a guard will poke their head in and shoot you. I believe this is just random chance. It is fairly low random chance, but if I hadn’t already known it was possible to survive longer, I might have thought I was still on the wrong track.

Also by random chance, you might hear Lord Flathead himself, which is gratifying in a way. Is this the only time in the Zork series as whole you get any interaction direct from one of the Flatheads?

One particularly loud and grating voice can now be heard above the others outside the room. “Very nice! Very nice! Not enough security, but very nice! Now, Lord Feepness, pay attention! I’ve been thinking and what we need is a dam, a tremendous dam to control the Frigid River, with thousands of gates. Yes! I can see it now. We shall call it … Flood Control Dam #2. No, not quite right. Aha! It will be Flood Control Dam #3.” “Pardon me, my Lord, but wouldn’t that be just a tad excessive?” “Nonsense! Now, let me tell you my idea for hollowing out volcanoes…” With that, the voices trail out into nothingness.

Once the guards have left, you can go back in the museum and find the stone door leading to the artifacts is locked. I assumed “not enough security” was a prompt along the lines of the artifacts would be lootable if I could get in there. I had the “morphing skeleton key” from last time but that was stuck in the present. I had wild plans of perhaps hiding the key in the machine in Zork I (that’s using the Scenic Table and going to the place with the timber) and that was somehow in the past enough it was really the machine in 777 and we could find the key then? That makes no sense at all, but I was definitely and truly stumped here, and I did look up a hint.

I don’t know if I regret it or not. Probably not. The gold machine, despite being large and something you can sit in, is movable.

>push gold machine east
Jewel Room
You are in a high-ceilinged chamber in the middle of which sits a tall, round steel cage, which is securely locked. In the middle of the cage is a pedestal on which sit the Crown Jewels of the Great Underground Empire: a sceptre, a jewelled knife, and a golden ring. A small bronze plaque, now tarnished, is on the cage.
With some effort, you push the machine into the room with you.

I do think the game could have clued the movability a little better (maybe have it subtly shift position when getting out of it) although I was also fooled visualizing the mechanics of how the time travel worked. I was thinking, if warping back to 776, I’d simply be landing where the person who was living in 776 placed the gold machine. This does not makes sense for the fact you land in stone if you go to 775, but this was more a sense than a fully coherent thought anyway. (The gold machine does go back to the technology museum though after jumping in time, so I wasn’t completely off with my thought process either.)

Now, teleporting back to 776 while in the Jewel Room gets a different description:

Jewel Room
You are in a high-ceilinged chamber, in the center of which is a pedestal which is the intended home of the Crown Jewels of the Great Underground Empire: a jewelled knife, a golden ring, and the royal sceptre. The room is, by appearances, unfinished.
Through the door you can hear voices which, from their sound, belong to military or police personnel.

You can scoop up all three items without incident; the problem is that the time machine doesn’t let you take inventory items back with you. The key here — and this is genuinely a brilliant stroke — is that if you want to steal the item you need to move it. As the guards in 776 will discover whatever theft you do, they’ll search for it, and it needs to be stored somewhere it will stay all the way up to 948.

While a brilliant idea, this led to another design bobble:

>examine gold machine
The machine consists of a seat and a console containing one small button and a dial connected to a display which reads 776.

>examine seat
There is nothing on the seat.

>search seat
You find nothing unusual.

>shake seat
You can’t take it; thus, you can’t shake it!

It turns out you can MOVE SEAT or LOOK UNDER SEAT. This verb admittedly showed up in Zork I (at the rug) but it is a fairly natural action to look under a rug; looking under a seat where it is not even clear that such an action can be done is much fussier. (I was imagining more of a hard plastic, which wouldn’t have anything underneath at all.)

>move seat
You notice a small hollow area under the seat.

I needed to check hints to find this. Again, this could have been solved with a minor tweak; maybe having the seat shift a little bit at the same time as the gold machine, so it becomes obvious it is movable.

There’s one extra finesse to the puzzle: you can’t fit all the treasures.

>put sceptre under seat
It’s too big to hide under the seat.

>put knife under seat
It’s too big to hide under the seat.

>put ring under seat
The ring is concealed underneath the seat.

You can only take the ring. This is hinted at because the player wears it automatically, and in a couple other cases elsewhere in the game the player also wears important items automatically.

Incidentally, the jewel room changes after the theft:

>read plaque
The plaque explains that this room was to be the home of the Crown Jewels of the Great Underground Empire. However, following the unexplained disappearance of a priceless ring during the final stages of construction, Lord Flathead decided to place the remaining jewels in a safer location. Interestingly enough, he distrusted museum security enough to place his prized possesion, an incredibly gaudy crown, within a locked safe in a volcano specifically hollowed out for that purpose.

If you do things wrong, it is possible for the people in 776 to realize the gold machine is working (there’s a plaque that says all the machines are non-functional which is how they made the mistake before) and they’ll hide the machine away so you can’t get a second attempt.

This is all a fantastic level of detail and worldbuilding. I’d love to say I could just forgive the mistakes and call this the best puzzle of the Zork Trilogy, but this isn’t like 5 minutes of a modernist French film that I needed to re-watch to understand some detail; this is more like a book with part of the pages stuck together and nothing I could do would get them open.

From the back of the Zork 3 manual, via the Infocom Documentation Project.

Definite progress!

From the Commodore cover of the game, via Mobygames.

Some of this progress was, admittedly, sheer luck in timing. The game continues its pattern of having time be important, and one particular moment I solved what would was potentially a very tricky puzzle by accident.

Last time I had left off on killing a shadowy figure, who I still haven’t fully figured out yet. If there’s something special to do there I figured I might need an item elsewhere, and I still had puzzles to nudge at. Specifically, I took the opportunity to puzzle over the Scenic Vista.

Scenic Vista
You are in a small chamber carved in the rock, with the sole exit to the north. Mounted on one wall is a table labelled “Scenic Vista,” whose featureless surface is angled toward you. One might believe that the table was used to indicate points of interest in the view from this spot, like those found in many parks. On the other hand, your surroundings are far from spacious and by no stretch of the imagination could this spot be considered scenic. An indicator above the table reads “IV”.
Mounted on one wall is a flaming torch, which fills the room with a flickering light.

I thought there had to be something else to the table, so I kept trying out verbs until hitting paydirt…

>turn table
You can’t turn that!

>feel table
You touch the table and are instantly transported to another place!

Sacrificial Altar
This is the interior of a huge temple of primitive construction. A few flickering torches cast a sallow illumination over the altar, which is still drenched with the blood of human sacrifice. Behind the altar is an enormous statue of a demon which seems to reach towards you with dripping fangs and razor-sharp talons. A low noise begins behind you, and you turn to see hundreds of hunched and hairy shapes. A guttural chant issues from their throats. Near you stands a figure draped in a robe of deepest black, brandishing a huge sword. The chant grows louder as the robed figure approaches the altar. The large figure spots you and approaches menacingly. He reaches into his cloak and pulls out a great, glowing dagger. He pulls you onto the altar, and with a murmur of approval from the throng, he slices you neatly across your abdomen.

**** You have died ****

You find yourself deep within the earth in a barren prison cell. Outside the iron-barred window, you can see a great, fiery pit. Flames leap up and very nearly sear your flesh. After a while, footfalls can be heard in the distance, then closer and closer…. The door swings open, and in walks an old man.

He is dressed simply in a hood and cloak, wearing a few simple jewels, carrying something under one arm, and leaning on a wooden staff. A single key, as if to a massive prison cell, hangs from his belt.

He raises the staff toward you and you hear him speak, as if in a dream: “I await you, though your journey be long and full of peril. Go then, and let me not wait long!” You feel some great power well up inside you and you fall to the floor. The next moment, you are awakening, as if from a deep slumber.

Endless Stair
There is a lamp here.

…or at least a very amusing death. This indicated I could use the table to teleport to the four different places being viewed. Other than the instant-death one there was one in the main dungeon proper (which can be used to transport objects out of the area, since ordinarily you have to jump in the lake which doesn’t let you).

>touch table
You touch the table and are instantly transported to another place!

Damp Passage
This is a particularly damp spot even by dungeon standards. You can see a crossroads to the west, and two nearly identical passages lead east and northeast. A stone channel, wide and deep, steeply descends into the room from the south. It is covered with moss and lichen, and is far too slippery to climb. The channel crosses the room, but the opening where it once continued north is now blocked by rubble.

Additionally, I found a room which I think comes straight out of Zork I. Remember I mentioned the crystal ball from mainframe Zork showed an area that was in Zork I so it couldn’t quite match the puzzle; this seems to be at least a nod to that.

Timber Room
This is a long and narrow passage, which is cluttered with broken timbers. A wide passage comes from the east and turns at the west end of the room into a very narrow passageway. From the west comes a strong draft.
There is a broken timber here.

From Reddit.

Finally, most importantly, I found the Grue Repellent I had been looking for!

Room 8
This is a small chamber carved out of the rock at the end of a short crawl. On the wall is crudely chiseled the number “8”. The only apparent exit, to the east, seems to be a blur and a loud, whirring sound resounds through the rock.
A spray can is in the corner. In large type is the legend “Frobozz Magic Grue Repellent.”

This room is adjacent to the Carousel from Zork II.

From a Zork User Group poster, via Andrew Plotkin.

While, again, you can’t jump in the lake with objects, what you can do is apply the repellent right before popping into the lake (which I imagine rubs some it off, but not all of it) and then head into the dark cave where I remembered walking through some grues.

From the Zork 3 manual.

While they don’t hold particular terror now I remember this being one of the most unnerving parts of the game back when I was 12 or so, which is how the existence of repellent stuck in my mind in the first place.

>apply can to me
The spray smells like a mixture of old socks and burning rubber. If I were a grue I’d sure stay clear!

>enter lake
The shock of entering the frigid water has made you drop all your possessions into the lake!

On the Lake

>s
Southern Shore
You are on the south shore of the lake. Rock formations prevent movement to the west and thickening swamp to the east makes the going all but impossible. To the south, where the beach meets a rock formation, you can make out a dark passage sloping steeply upward into the rock.

>s
It is pitch black.

>s
There are sinister gurgling noises in the darkness all around you!
It is pitch black.
The ground continues to slope upwards away from the lake. You can barely detect a dim light from the east.
That horrible smell is much less pungent now.

(I had to repeat this sequence a couple times until I found “south” was the appropriate exit. The dim light from the east makes the next step easy.)

>e
Key Room
You are between some rock and a dark place, The room is lit dimly from above, revealing a lone, dark path sloping down to the west.
To one side of the room is a large manhole cover.
The light from above seems to be focused in the center of the room, where a single key is lying in the dust.

The key is one that’s always shifting if you try to examine it. It seems to be a “master key” of sorts.

>examine key
The key is round and thin, more like a pencil than a key.
Strange, though. The key seems to change shape constantly.

>examine key
The key is a long and heavy skeleton key.
Strange, though. The key seems to change shape constantly.

Past the key is the bit where I got very, very, lucky. Normally you can then just walk your way to a water slide which goes down to the Damp Passage viewable from the table earlier. After X turns in the game (this is a global timer but I haven’t bothered to figure out what X is) is an earthquake that hits the caverns. If you wait too long to get through this section the passage is cut off. I managed to view the event while it was happening:

Water Slide
You are near the northern end of this segment of the aqueduct system. To the south and slightly uphill, the bulk of the aqueduct looms ominously, towering above a gorge. To the north, the water channel drops precipitously and enters a rocky hole. The damp moss and lichen would certainly make that a one-way trip.
There is a great tremor from within the earth. The entire dungeon shakes violently and loose debris starts to fall from above you.
The channel beneath your feet trembles. At once, the channel directly to the south of you collapses with its supporting pillar and falls into the chasm!

I might have puzzled out that this was essentially a softlock from my being too slow to get through this section, but I’m not so sure. I might also have caught on due to the earthquake also having a positive effect, as you’ll see in a moment.

Incidentally, if you don’t set up the torch first in the Damp Corridor the room is dark and you inevitably become grue bait. However, revival is forgiving and doesn’t drop score. This is doubly odd given the softlock I just mentioned. I think it isn’t about gameplay cruelty (or lack thereof) as much as plot; it makes sense the Dungeon Master is trying to help, but he can only do so much.

Moving on, I decided to try my newly-found key out on the rusted door branch I couldn’t get through. The obstacle seemed like rust, not the lack of a key, but I thought it was worth a try anyway.

Great Door
This is the south end of a monumental hall, full of dust and debris from a recent earthquake. To the east is a great iron door, rusted shut. To its right, however, is a gaping cleft in the rock and behind, a cleared area.

The “cleft” is new! It happens when the earthquake damages the caverns.

>e
Museum Entrance
This is the entrance to the Royal Museum, the finest and grandest in the Great Underground Empire. To the south, down a few steps, is the entrance to the Royal Puzzle and to the east, through a stone door, is the Royal Jewel Collection. A wooden door to the north is open and leads to the Museum of Technology. To the west is a great iron door, rusted shut. To its left, however, is a cleft in the rock providing a western route away from the museum.

To the north is a time machine (!) which I’ll talk about next time. I instead want to discuss the royal puzzle.

>s
Royal Puzzle Entrance
This is a small square room, in the middle of which is a perfectly round hole through which you can discern the floor some ten feet below. The place under the hole is dark, but it appears to be completely enclosed in rock. In any event, it doesn’t seem likely that you could climb back up. Exits are west and, up a few steps, north.
Lying on the ground is a small note of some kind.

>read note
Warning:
The Royal Puzzle is quite dangerous and it is possible to become trapped within its confines. Please do not enter the puzzle after hours or when museum personnel are not present.
The Management

>d
Room in a Puzzle
You are in a small square room bounded to the north and west with marble walls and to the east and south with sandstone walls.

So: this is Sokoban. The actual puzzle game was designed in 1981 and released in 1982, but this puzzle was present wholesale in the mainframe Zork, so it came beforehand. (I’m almost 100% certain Hiroyuki Imabayashi, inventor of Sokoban, had no chance to see the game. The Sierra On-Line Apple II adventures made it over the ocean early but not Zork.)

You start at the upper left, and push sandstone blocks (the lighter ones on the map). The X has a depression which contains a book with an elegant description.

The book is written in a strong and elegant hand and is full of strange and wondrous pictures. The text is in a tongue unknown to you and is penned in many colours. Some of the words seem to change colour as you read them. The book itself is very old and the pages dry and brittle.

(Why British spelling, I wonder?)

You can use the book at a door with a narrow slot to escape (that’s on the bottom row of the map) but it consumes the book. The right way to get out and keep the book is to push the block with a ladder attached to the west side so it is positioned in a way you can climb back up the way you came.

You need to clear space more or less as shown. What makes this interesting in a puzzle sense is both blocks in the top row are restricted to that row via Sokoban-rules, so you don’t have enough room to push the ladder over via a direct route.

>u
With the help of the ladder, you exit the puzzle.
Royal Puzzle Entrance
Lying on the ground is a small note of some kind.

I’ll get into the other exits from the Museum (a Technology Museum and a Jewel Room) next time, and possibly get all the way to the endgame? I’m still worried about another secret or holistic timing element (like the earthquake) I haven’t run into yet.

When playing adventure games — any genre of games really — I sometimes have “moments of recognition” where systems click together and a secret pattern is revealed.

With adventure games, this can include recognizing a technical restraint or common usage; a recent example would be Seek where it took some time to realize all action happened between rooms and USE worked as a verb with absolutely everything (even though other verbs were acceptable). Patterns might be a little more abstract, like recognizing a design tendency of the author; for instance, some of the Cambridge mainframe games like Hamil have very little in the way of “just scenery” rooms, so if there’s an unusual detail, there’s a fair chance it has some real significance (like dust on the floor being poison).

Katakombs might have went fully-on moon logic with its puzzle where you give sugar to a dragon, but once the pattern is established it becomes easier to recognize you might want to give salt to an elephant (even if still not terribly logical).

Art from the early Zork Users’s Group map. From the Gallery of Undiscovered Entities. Not how I envisioned the Dungeon Master.

With Zork III I already mentioned a scene where you go down a ledge, find a chest, and have someone ask about tying the rope to the chest. You then wait a bit, and climb up to find the man has already raided the chest and hands you over a staff he supposedly found in the chest. (The staff doesn’t fit back in the chest, so: suspicious.) There’s then a delay while he looks at his valuables and then leaves.

You can incidentally kill the man and take the valuables, but they are literally just described as valuables — there’s absolutely no point in having them.

The important thing on the sequence is that you have to WAIT. You not only need to WAIT for the man to come back with the rope, but you need to wait to have the whole sequence trigger in the first place:

Cliff Ledge
This is a rock-strewn ledge near the base of a tall cliff. The bottom of the cliff is another fifteen feet below. You have little hope of climbing up the cliff face, but you might be able to scramble down from here (though it’s doubtful you could return).
A long piece of rope is dangling down from the top of the cliff and is within your reach.
A large chest, closed and locked, is lying among the boulders.

>wait
Time passes…

>wait
Time passes…
At the edge of the cliff above you, a man appears. He looks down at you and speaks. “Hello, down there! You seem to have a problem. Maybe I can help you.” He chuckles in an unsettling sort of way. “Perhaps if you tied that chest to the end of the rope I might be able to drag it up for you. Then, I’ll be more than happy to help you up!” He laughs again.

Now, when I first ran across this I was examining things so it was quite natural to hang out for two turns, but it did start to lead me to suspect that there’s a general plot thread of patience, and in a practical sense, it may mean persistence and repetition could be the key to solving some puzzles.

I vaguely recalled seeing a ship somewhere in the game, so I went to the Flathead Ocean and waited. After six turns:

>look
Flathead Ocean
You are at the shore of an amazing underground sea, the topic of many a legend among adventurers. Few were known to have arrived at this spot, and fewer to return. There is a heavy surf and a breeze is blowing on-shore. The land rises steeply to the east and quicksand prevents movement to the south. A thick mist covers the ocean and extends over the hills to the east. A path heads north along the beach.

>look
Flathead Ocean
You are at the shore of an amazing underground sea, the topic of many a legend among adventurers. Few were known to have arrived at this spot, and fewer to return. There is a heavy surf and a breeze is blowing on-shore. The land rises steeply to the east and quicksand prevents movement to the south. A thick mist covers the ocean and extends over the hills to the east. A path heads north along the beach.
Passing alongside the shore now is an old boat, reminiscent of an ancient Viking ship. Standing on the prow of the ship is an old and crusty sailor, peering out over the misty ocean.

I did quite quickly come up with the next part, even though it is spectacularly unfair, or at least requires you to use some knowledge from Zork I.

The Land of the Dead, as depicted on the Zork User Group map for Zork I. Also from the Gallery for Undiscovered Entities.

Specifically, there’s a book that later gets used in combination with a candle and bell at the Land of the Dead.

COMMANDMENT #12592
Oh ye who go about saying unto each: “Hello sailor”:
Dost thou know the magnitude of thy sin before the gods?
Yea, verily, thou shalt be ground between two stones.
Shall the angry gods cast thy body into the whirlpool?
Surely, thy eye shall be put out with a sharp stick!
Even unto the ends of the earth shalt thou wander and
unto the land of the dead shalt thou be sent at last.
Surely thou shalt repent of thy cunning.

It was essentially a joke phrase in Zork I, and in Zork mainframe (which I was actually thinking of) the end game has the Dungeon Master ask where the phrase “Hello Sailor” is useful; the proper response is “nowhere”. Due to that, it was irresistible to try:

>say “hello sailor”

The seaman looks up and maneuvers the boat toward shore. He cries out “I have waited three ages for someone to say those words and save me from sailing this endless ocean. Please accept this gift. You may find it useful!” He throws something which falls near you in the sand, then sails off toward the west, singing a lively, but somewhat uncouth, sailor song.
The boat sails silently through the mist and out of sight.

There seems to be zero indication in Zork III itself to do this. I could check the Invisiclues to see if there’s an official explanation but I’ve managed to steer clear so far so I’ll wait until I’m done / actually stuck. (If this is really the case, the upsetting part isn’t the carry-over of knowledge as much as the lack of clarity it could even happen; Savage Island Part 2 uses information from Part 1 but it requires a password from the end of part 1 to even get started, marking it as clearly a continuity of work.)

The sailor drops off a vial. I’m not sure what to do with it yet.

>examine vial
It is a small, transparent vial which looks empty but is strangely heavy.

>open vial
The vial is open. There is a sweet odor from within the vial, apparently coming from a heavy but invisible liquid.

You can drink it with no apparent ill effect, but no apparent good effect either. I originally suspected it might be the grue repellent but there’s no way to apply it to the skin, and I vaguely recall the repellent is straightforwardly labeled as such.

Moving on: I was able to apply the patience pattern to another puzzle entirely.

The Land of Shadow, from the Zork III ZUG map.

The Land of Shadow had a figure that attacks. Repeated attempts at combat did not seem to be going anywhere, so I assumed this involved a puzzle of some sort. Maybe we’re not supposed to attack the shadow at all, but make peace with it?

Land of Shadow
Through the shadows, a cloaked and hooded figure appears before you, blocking the northwestern exit from the room and carrying a brightly glowing sword.
From nowhere, the sword from the junction appears in your hand, wildly glowing!

>kill figure with sword
A good stroke, but it’s too slow.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>kill figure with sword
A quick stroke, but the hooded figure is on guard.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>kill figure with sword
A good slash, but it misses by a mile.
You are wounded by a lightning thrust!

I decided, after the other events that involved WAITing, to just be persistent. After about 50 or so exchanges — certainly enough that it would indicate in most games we were barking up entirely the wrong tree — I finally won.

>kill figure with sword
A sharp thrust and the hooded figure is badly wounded!
The figure appears to be badly hurt and defenseless.
The hooded figure attempts a thrust, but its weakened state prevents hitting you.

>kill figure with sword
The hooded figure, fatally wounded, slumps to the ground. It gazes up at you once, and you catch a brief glimpse of deep and sorrowful eyes. Before you can react, the figure vanishes in a cloud of fetid vapor.

Now, even though this caused my score to go up by one, I’m not sure this is quite right — there’s the message right before about “badly hurt and defenseless” which may mean we need to do something special there. Even knowing that it is possible to reach that state with nothing other than KILL FIGURE WITH SWORD is progress, though.

Speaking of score: it is now at 3. One point for picking up the lantern (at the very first room!) one point for getting the sword (which involves doing nothing, more or less) and one from the combat I just mentioned. I originally thought it might be a set of 7 items but now I’m not so sure. The score certainly feels much different than any other Infocom game.

I did manage to solve one more puzzle. The old man that appears at the engravings I mentioned last time is also something of a patience-event; I only met him on a repeat visit to the room.

>ne
Engravings Room
You are in a room with passages heading southwest and southeast. The north wall is ornately carved, filled with strange runes and writing in an unfamiliar language.

>sw
Damp Passage

>ne
Engravings Room
An old and wizened man is huddled, asleep, in the corner. He is snoring loudly. From his appearance, he is weak and frail.

Going by the logic maybe we are supposed to “prove our worth” and the usual fairy tale thing of proving kindness to strangers, I took the bread that had been laying out in the open by the tree and gave it to the man.

>wake man
The old man is roused to consciousness. He peers at you through eyes which appear much younger and stronger than his frail body and waits, as if expecting something to happen.

>give bread
(to the old man)
He looks up at you and takes the waybread from you. Slowly, he eats the bread and pauses when he is finished. He starts to speak: “Perhaps what you seek is through there!” He points at the carved wall to the north, where you now notice the bare outline of a secret door. When you turn back to the old man, you notice that he has gone!

This leads to a new area that I recognize from the mainframe Zork endgame.

>n
Button Room
You are standing at the southern end of a long, dimly lit hall. To the south, stairs ascend into darkness. To the north the corridor is illuminated by torches set high in the walls, out of reach. On one wall is a red button.

>n
Beam Room
You are in the middle of a long north-south corridor whose walls are polished stone. A narrow red beam of light crosses the room at the north end, inches above the floor.
The corridor continues north and south.

>n
Hallway
This is a part of the long hallway. The east and west walls are dressed stone. In the center of the hall is a shallow stone channel. In the center of the room the channel widens into a large hole around which is engraved a compass rose.
The hallway continues to the south.
A large mirror fills the north side of the hallway.

The button normally just goes click with no effect. I remember having to block the beam with an object, for some reason.

>put lamp in beam
The beam is now interrupted by a lamp lying on the floor.

Putting the lamp in the beam and then pressing the button again:

>push button
Click. Snap!

This has an effect in the mirror room:

Hallway
This is a part of the long hallway. The east and west walls are dressed stone. In the center of the hall is a shallow stone channel. In the center of the room the channel widens into a large hole around which is engraved a compass rose.
The hallway continues to the south.
A large mirror fills the north side of the hallway.
The mirror is mounted on a panel which has been opened outward.

I haven’t had time to investigate further, but I can say: glorious forward progress! The game does seem to be aiming at a compact experience, so I don’t expect this to go much longer than two more posts.

One last, brief note for now. You can download any version of an Infocom game here, but if you download Zork 3, do not download the last one listed (r25-s860811). Instead download the one right before, marked “Masterpieces version”. I’ve found r25 to sometimes crash when taking an object (one you aren’t allowed to, but the game isn’t supposed to crash!) and the prior version I have had no issues with.

As in a dream, you see yourself tumbling down a great, dark staircase. All about you are shadowy images of struggles against fierce opponents and diabolical traps. These give way to another round of images: of imposing stone figures, a cool, clear lake, and, now, of an old, yet oddly youthful man. He turns toward you slowly, his long, silver hair dancing about him in a fresh breeze. “You have reached the final test, my friend! You are proved clever and powerful, but this is not yet enough! Seek me when you feel yourself worthy!” The dream dissolves around you as his last words echo through the void…

Infocom followed Deadline (which I played last year) with two games in time for the Christmas shopping season: Starcross, a hard sci-fi game where you play a black hole prospector, and Zork III, the finale to their best-selling trilogy.

From The Infocom Documentation Project.

I do want to emphasize “best selling” here — we have very good data from 1981 to 1986 that shows 378,987 units sold. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was second at 254,249. The importance is in, essentially, the critical mass: it left a mark that makes it remembered today amongst even “normal” gamers in a way that one of the critically acclaimed games like A Mind Forever Voyaging or Trinity didn’t.

To put it another way, for most of this blog’s existence the reason the average person found it is that they were looking up something about Zork. (This has now been outdone by Cain’s Jawbone, which I should get back to this summer for an encore performance; people are still editing the commentary document.) So I’m looking forward to giving the trilogy a proper farewell. Given the games essentially started from the mainframe version and I first wrote about mainframe Zork in 2011, this has been essentially a 12-year odyssey.

The general wisdom is that Zork mainframe was split into 3 parts in order to form the trilogy. That’s only sort-of correct; Zork I and mainframe Zork quite clearly match, Zork II grabs some puzzles and arranges them in a much different geography and with a brand-new overarching plot involving a demon, and Zork III grabs most of the remaining puzzles as well as a section of the endgame. Since the end of Zork mainframe matches Zork III (to the best of my memory, I haven’t played Zork III since 1990) in one sense Zork III actually matches more closely the original source material.

But only in a sense: certainly the framing is not around gather-the-treasures in the same way. One remarkable thing I remember is that there are only 7 points possible, and getting all 7 points does not mean you’ve reached the end of the game.

Endless Stair
You are at the bottom of a seemingly endless stair, winding its way upward beyond your vision. An eerie light, coming from all around you, casts strange shadows on the walls. To the south is a dark and winding trail.
Your old friend, the brass lantern, is at your feet.

>score
Your potential is 0 of a possible 7, in 0 moves.

You embark on the journey, as the above clip indicates, by starting at the bottom of a staircase, the same one found at the end of Zork II. There’s an “old, yet oddly youthful man” that speaks to us, but the game is otherwise evasive. Even the advertising copy is evasive; Issue II of The New Zork Times states “The greatest challenge [of Zork III] is figuring out what is going on and what you are there for.”

Without a treasure directive, the only thing to do is: explore.

>turn on lamp
The lamp is now on.

>s
Junction
You are at the junction of a north-south passage and an east-west passage. To the north, you can make out the bottom of a stairway. The ways to the east and south are relatively cramped, but a wider trail leads to the west.
Standing before you is a great rock. Imbedded within it is an Elvish sword.

>get sword
The sword is deeply imbedded in the rock. You can’t budge it.

This moment made me glad, because it means I didn’t remember everything about the game; I don’t remember this moment at all.

In fact, I don’t remember enough that I have yet to solve a puzzle, even though I’ve mapped out the initially accessible areas. Let’s take a tour:

You start at the stairs and junction; the sword, incidentally, isn’t really a puzzle, as it will simply appear in your hands later. Just to the east of the junction there’s a small area with “stone channel” that is “too slippery to climb” (this might be a puzzle, but I suspect this is just an exit rather than an entrance) as well as an “engravings room” which echoes a similar room in Zork 1.

Engravings Room
You are in a room with passages heading southwest and southeast. The north wall is ornately carved, filled with strange runes and writing in an unfamiliar language.
An old and wizened man is huddled, asleep, in the corner. He is snoring loudly. From his appearance, he is weak and frail.

The wizened man — who I suspect to be the Dungeon Master — incidentally is here at random. You can wake him but I haven’t gotten anything useful to happen from it.

>wake man
The old man is roused to consciousness. He peers at you through eyes which appear much younger and stronger than his frail body and waits, as if expecting something to happen.

Down an adjacent branch is a crystal grotto leading to a rusted door which I am unable to open.

Crystal Grotto
This is a chamber of breathtaking beauty. Mighty stalagmites form structured shapes of rock, encrusted with crystalline formations. Phosphorescent mosses, fed by a trickle of water from some unseen source above, make the crystals glow and sparkle with every color of the rainbow. There is an opening to the west, and a man-made passage heads south.

>s
This is the north end of a large hall with a vaulted ceiling. A long, tiled hallway leads north through a tall arch. Although the origin or purpose of this room is unclear, there is a large rendering of the Royal Seal of Lord Dimwit Flathead carved on the wall.

>s
Great Door
You are in the southern half of a monumental hall. To the east lies a tremendous iron door which appears to be rusted shut.

I do like the brief moment here of Lord Flathead for building atmosphere and setting, but I don’t know if it has an significance other than marking the door as leading to something Royal-related.

Down a south branch is an area with a view of an aqueduct and a lake. The aqueduct seems to be merely for scenery.

Aqueduct View
This is a small balcony carved into a near-vertical cliff. To the east, stretching from north to south, stands a monumental aqueduct supported by mighty stone pillars, some of which are starting to crumble from age. You feel a sense of loss and sadness as you ponder this once-proud structure and the failure of the Empire which created this and other engineering marvels. Some stone steps lead up to the northwest.

The lake’s icy waters cause you to be “nearly paralyzed” and drop any items you have. This makes it impossible to carry your lamp; this is meaningful as the south shore has an exit but is dark.

Southern Shore
You are on the south shore of the lake. Rock formations prevent movement to the west and thickening swamp to the east makes the going all but impossible. To the south, where the beach meets a rock formation, you can make out a dark passage sloping steeply upward into the rock.

>s
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

>e
Oh, no! You have walked into a den of hungry grues and it’s dinner time!

(In one of the few things I remember clearly, I’m fairly sure grue repellent is used here, but I don’t know where to get it and if we have to be concerned about the lake washing it off.)

There’s one more shore you can visit that has a “Scenic Vista”, a table that switches between four scenes like a surveillance camera. They are marked I, II, III, and IV. I do not remember this part of the game at all.

I:

>examine table
The surface is pale and featureless, but slowly, an image takes shape!
You see a passage cluttered with broken timbers. An extremely narrow opening can be seen at the end of the room.
The image slowly fades.

II:

>examine table
The surface is pale and featureless, but slowly, an image takes shape!
You see a tiny room with rough walls. Chiseled crudely on one wall is the number “8”. The only apparent exit seems to be a blur.
The image slowly fades.

III:

>examine table
The surface is pale and featureless, but slowly, an image takes shape!
You see a wide room with two nearly identical passages leading east and northeast. A wide channel descends steeply into the room and seems to be blocked by rubble.
The image slowly fades.

IV:

>examine table
The surface is pale and featureless, but slowly, an image takes shape!
You see the interior of a huge temple rudely constructed of basalt blocks. Flickering torches cast a sallow illumination over an altar still wet with the blood of human sacrifice, its velvet covers stained and encrusted with gore.
The image slowly fades.

This seems to be invoking one of my favorite puzzles of original mainframe Zork, where you gaze into a crystal ball and see a scene with coal dust, and since the room is one not previously visited, you need to induce from the clues where the room might be. However, since the section of the game that had this room was already used in Zork I, the puzzle must be arranged differently here.

To the west there are three areas; first, a Land of Shadow made of multiple rooms (see the map) and where you hear “quiet footsteps” while walking about before being confronted.

Land of Shadow
You are in a dark and shadowy land. All around you are gentle hills and eerie shadows. Far above, shrouded in mist, you can barely make out the ceiling of the enormous cavern that spans this entire land.
Through the shadows, a cloaked and hooded figure appears before you, blocking the northwestern exit from the room and carrying a brightly glowing sword.
From nowhere, the sword from the junction appears in your hand, wildly glowing!

Any attempts to engage in battle fail. This uses a similar system of combat to the duels with the Thief in Zork 1, but you and the shadow are evenly matched. Interestingly enough, if you drop your sword the figure picks it up and hands it to you.

(It is faintly possible this figure is also the Dungeon Master.)

To the far west there is an ocean. Sometimes there is a ship but I haven’t been able to get its attention.

Flathead Ocean
You are at the shore of an amazing underground sea, the topic of many a legend among adventurers. Few were known to have arrived at this spot, and fewer to return. There is a heavy surf and a breeze is blowing on-shore. The land rises steeply to the east and quicksand prevents movement to the south. A thick mist covers the ocean and extends over the hills to the east. A path heads north along the beach.

To the northwest there’s a cliff under a gaping hole where sunshine is visible, with a piece of bread and a rope you can climb. Climbing the rope leads down to a ledge with a locked chest. After waiting briefly a man offers to help:

At the edge of the cliff above you, a man appears. He looks down at you and speaks. “Hello, down there! You seem to have a problem. Maybe I can help you.” He chuckles in an unsettling sort of way. “Perhaps if you tied that chest to the end of the rope I might be able to drag it up for you. Then, I’ll be more than happy to help you up!” He laughs again.

After sufficient waits the man does, indeed, come back:

>wait
Time passes…
A familiar voice calls down to you. “Are you still there?” he bellows with a coarse laugh. “Well, then, grab onto the rope and we’ll see what we can do.” The rope drops to within your reach.

>grab rope
You grab securely on to the rope.
The man starts to heave on the rope and within a few moments you arrive at the top of the cliff. The man removes the last few valuables from the chest and prepares to leave. “You’ve been a good sport! Here, take this, for whatever good it is! I can’t see that I’ll be needing one!” He hands you a plain wooden staff from the bottom of the chest and begins examining his valuables.
The chest, open and empty, is at your feet.

This may be the optimal result? I suspect something else is afoot here. But all I have for now is a sword, a staff, and some bread, and a smattering of puzzles that don’t want to budge.