I should really give Zork an earnest try. Every few years I pick it up for like 10min, thinking “Wow, this is cool”, and then drop it.
It’s a ton of fun. Honestly, I suggest you play it the way I did as a kid, and bring out a bunch of paper and pencils and start drawing your own maps by hand. There’s something magical about that process, imo.
Back in the day, it sometimes took me YEARS to solve an Infocom game. No internet meant no help. One had to send away for clues in the mail.
IIRC, I used to do it in Excel. It was GRUEsome and I didn’t get very far in the game.
That sounds like the way to do it. Last time, I read some posts where people were using premade maps online, and my first thought was that it would defeat the purpose. I want to feel like an explorer.
Good judgment. There is at least one puzzle all about navigating a confusing area without a guide. A pre-made map would rob you of the challenge.
I second the suggestion of mapping by hand.
I remember the start of having an online way to figure things out, starting with the maps. Stratics was an early source for the current MMORPGs and the solutions. Before then, unless you had a group of people all sharing their discoveries on a BBS, you had pencil and paper by you to figure things out. It does change the game experience when you have to live within its boundary and can’t peek at the bigger solutions. Some games got frustrating because of this, but the Infocom line had their great parser that helped in its own ways by being a bit more accessible. That’s what I’m interested in more than the games themselves, how it was so good at conversational dialogue and understanding your prompt, in the same days where ELIZA was around in the personal computer world and was very limited because it was just IF-THEN clauses.
The rise of the Internet guide really ruined video games. MMOs especially are basically unplayable with how people interact with them.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Oh, and I was. Many times.
Consider whose fault it could be: not a torch or a match in your inventory
Attack Troll with Nasty Knife
