Missed Classic: Beyond Zork – Won! And Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

It was a bumpy ride and I took too many hints, but we have defeated Beyond Zork and can finally put it to rest. I am grateful to our community for the assistance! I was able to solve most of the rest of the game on my own, but as you will see, there were still a few places that caused me trouble. I ended the last post with Prince Foo of Pheebor’s helmet, finally retrieved from the far distant future with the help of our trusty time archway. We had to take a chocolate truffle, dip it into the Fountain of Youth, travel back in time to the battle where the prince died, hide the truffle in a ditch next to his body, travel forward in time thousands of years, and then dig it up with the help of a magical chocolate-sniffing ferret. When you write it out like that, it sounds perfectly normal, right? 

Stay turned to the very bottom of the post for questions and discussion on the future of the Infocom Marathon, especially with Return to Zork coming very soon in the 1993 cycle. Your input will be invaluable as I work out how I approach the coming months.

Let’s go shopping!

I put on the helmet and am immediately 30 points smarter! Obviously, that additional intelligence didn’t help Prince Fee survive the battle, but perhaps there are some puzzles later in the game that require the I.Q. boost. I use my word of recall to head back to town. Despite the helmet being hundreds of years old (and then buried for thousands more), extremely magical, and literally covered with priceless gems, the shopkeeper only offers 25 zorkmids for it. I assume I’m not supposed to sell it. The helmet, known as the “Pheehelm”, grants the wearer the “wisdom of kings” and the ability to “see the unseeable”. While there, I sell the hourglass back to the shopkeeper (pocketing 500 zorkmids in the process) and it’s time for a shopping spree.

I spend the next few minutes re-exploring the world with the helmet on to see if I stumble on anything invisible. I do not. Once done, I head to the weapon shop to buy more expensive gear. The first thing I want is platemail. It’s fantastic and increases my armor by 50 points, but it is far too heavy for me. I can carry nothing while wearing it, not even my axe. If this is a puzzle, I expect I will need to find something that increases my strength. I settle on the scale mail instead; it only improves my armor by 10 points, but at least then I can carry things. I also buy the elvish longsword (hoping that it glows in the presence of evil) and the magical scabbard. The scabbard and the sword are not compatible; the sword that fits inside is the Grueslayer and I will be on the lookout for it. 

Having bought just about everything of value in every shop, I explore for a while. I check if I can write the protection glyph on the ornament (no), whether the wisdom helps me with the monkey grinder or Zeno’s bridge (both no), and whether there is anywhere else I can get to with the gate spell (also no). I discover that saying the name of the Implementor’s goblet calls down bolts of lightning, but I have no immediate reason to smite anyone. I spend too long experimenting with the color-changing properties of the Field of Frotzen: objects (such as the butterfly) that are otherwise colorful are in shades of gray on the field. The goblet appears to be magical enough to avoid this, but there’s no way I can find to use that to my advantage. I suspect from the manual that if I make the butterfly colorful on the field somehow, this will call down the Giant Corbie and probably unblock me, but I fail to do that.

After too long, I take another hint to learn that I missed a sextant in the lighthouse. (We had to “search” the debris at the top floor.) It might help me with navigation, but I don’t have a puzzle that needs it yet. It’s worth 20 zorkmids at the store, but I hang onto it for now.

Discovering a sextant in a pile of junk, while also not realizing the importance of a warning label.

My next clue is a lot more revealing:

1. Did you happen to examine the brass plate on the chest?
2. Do you know anyone unable to read the warning?

This is one of those puzzles that might seem obvious in retrospect, but I’m not sure I ever would have gotten it on my own. It’s not unfair like the hungus puzzle, but it’s not easy. The trick is connecting two clues. The first is that a warning label on the chest in the lighthouse clearly says “Do Not Open This Chest” in several languages. I read this and opened it anyway; it teleported me to the land of unicorns. The second is that the manual tells us that the monkey grinders cannot read and suffer “an illiteracy rate of 103%”. It might seem natural to connect these, except I didn’t even realize that you can pick the chest up! It’s extremely heavy. We have to drop just about everything we are carrying, drag the chest to the grinder, hand it to him, and then he’ll open it and get teleported away to frolic with unicorns. The label seems almost redundant because he (like me) would have been inclined to open it, warning or no, but the presence of the warning might have been a hint for clever people. In our case, opening it wasn’t deadly– and perhaps he’ll be released from the unicorns quickly as well– so thinking about it as a weapon didn’t occur to me. I’m making excuses, but the only thing that matters is that I didn’t work it out on my own.

> give chest to grinder

“A treasure chest!” crows the monkey grinder, snatching it rudely away from you. “I just love surprises.”

   You wince as he taps on the outside of the chest, shakes it, then turns it upside down. Nothing happens. Then he places it on the ground, stares without comprehension at the brass plate, and cracks his knuckles. 

   Rays of golden light radiate from the sea chest’s interior as the lid creaks open. The monkey grinder is bathed in a chorus of radiant ecstasy that almost drowns out the telltale sign of an opening Gate. 

   When your head clears, the monkey grinder is gone without a trace.

With the grinder defeated, we snatch his hurdy gurdy off the ground and enter the guildhall. While I didn’t expect fireworks, I did expect to meet all of the amphibians from the beginning of the game and officially learn the plot. My expectations were dashed: there is nothing there. That’s not entirely true; I do find a discarded stave, but there are no wise people to talk to and far less to do in the guild than I expected. 

I return to the magic shop to identify my new items:

• The stave is a “stave of dispel” which presumably nullifies the effect of magic. I am uncertain where best to use it, but I am sure something obvious will come up.
• The hurdy gurdy doesn’t have a name, but appears to be very magical. It consists of a dial, a crank, and a box lid that can be opened or closed. The dial has symbols for eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, a hand, and a clock. 

I play with the hurdy gurdy and it is a complex piece of magical engineering! By setting the dial, closing the lid, and turning the crank, we power up magic based on the selected sense. By turning the crank left, it will have a positive effect, while right will make a negative one. For example, pointing it at the nose and turning the handle left will make a pungent odor, pointing to the eye and turning right makes the world seem just a little bit brighter and more colorful. (More on that in a moment.) All of the senses do just what you expect, while the clock icon triggers positive or negative memories. My first thought is that it will link with the Potion of Forgetfulness somehow. (A hypothesis: we drink the potion to forget something needed for a puzzle and then remember it again later using the device.)

My next thought is that we can use the device to make the Field of Frotzen more colorful, finally allowing me to fight the Giant Corbie and to explore the blocked-off northern part of the field. I use it, expecting something to happen with the corbies, but what actually happened came (literally) out of nowhere: a farmhouse fell from the sky.

I was aiming for the style of William Wallace Denslow, but this isn’t bad.

The manual had mentioned “Froon” as a pretty obvious ripoff of The Wizard of Oz, and here we are. I enter the farmhouse and it gets sucked into a tornado. A few turns later and we arrive in a magical land of flowers, having landed on a witch with an attractive pair of boots. I don’t seem to be able to get the boots off of her and look around for the trick. That is when I notice that one of the nearby flowers is actually a flower-person. Soon, I am surrounded by many such flower people, including their mayor. 

This triggers a scene where I am congratulated for defeating “the booted one” and I am offered the “Key to Froon”. Except, I am actually offered three keys: lavender, mauve, and puce. They all look like cheap styrofoam and I spend too much time trying to work out which one I need to take. Eventually, the crowd disperses and a second farmhouse drops, but this time on my head. I hope someone enjoys my shoes.

I do the sequence again and this time take the mauve key, but I am nearly positive that I am missing something. 

Mauve scarecrow!

After taking the key, I am transported back to the Field of Frotzen but am still blocked from the northern end by the corbies. I experiment further with the hurdy gurdy, this time checking out each of the rooms when I restore the color. You may recall that there were three scarecrows, two with dead corn and a third guarding a healthy field. By using the hurdy gurdy in each room, we are able to see that the scarecrows are wearing (you guessed it) mauve, lavender, or puce clothing. The healthy corn was with the lavender scarecrow. I restore back and do the Froon section again, this time taking the lavender key. Now, the corbies are scared of me!

With that, I am finally able to explore the northern end of the field, only to discover a colorful section with a rosebush. The bush contains one of the rare “compass roses” which the manual informs me can be used to control the wind. I have been looking for one of these for more than half the game! With luck, this will allow me to pilot the pterodactyl to the castle in the far southwest of the map.

My hunch turns out to be correct and I have no problem arriving at the castle, though it is smaller than I thought: we can only explore a one-room walled garden on the castle grounds. There is a morgia bush (the root of which can increase stamina, according to the manual) and a statue of a “brogmoid”. I have no idea what that is and it’s not mentioned in the manual. Or rather, it’s not mentioned in this manual. Brogmoids are included in the “Infotater” included with Sorcerer. 

No, PHEEBOR is for Lovers. Dead ones.

We don’t get much time to explore the garden before someone approaches from an unseen path in the garden. It’s a furry creature with a long, flat tail and red gown. She’s talking to herself. I search the manual to find out what she is, but the game identifies her quickly enough: she’s a platypus. Not like any platypus I have seen, but a regal talking platypus. I take the peaceful approach and try introducing myself, but she summons the guards and before I know it, I am forced to work in the granola mines and the game is over. I restore and try again.

Next time, I simply hide from her in the bush. I use the waiting to munch on some of the morgia root which increases my strength to 36! Will that be enough to allow me to wear plate armor? I get shades of Deadline as I remain hidden. The platypus queen opens a secret compartment in the statue and pulls what looks suspiciously like a magical bubble wand and solution. She blows a bubble which becomes a floating mirror. Like many evil queens before her, she does the fairytale thing:

“Mirror, mirror, in the air,

Who in Quendor is most fair?”

And the mirror responds:

Your Highness once was fair, ‘tis true. 

But Morning-Star is woo, woo, woo!

My first thought is wondering who “Morning-Star” is and whether they will be a character in the game. My second thought is wondering whether Moriarty was inspired by King’s Quest for this puzzle rather than Deadline. This whole sequence (including our detour to Froon) feels more “fairytale as told by Roberta Williams” than what Infocom usually offers. In any event, the queen calls the mirror a liar, blows a whistle, and disappears. I emerge from my spot and open the same hidden compartment to retrieve the solution and wand. I blow a bubble of my own, but unlike hers, this one does not talk to me. I can rotate it in any of the compass directions (though nothing obvious happens when I do) and look into it. That is it. Eventually, the bubble-mirror pops and it’s time to go. None of my magic works here and eventually I am forced to blow my own whistle to summon the pterodactyl for the final time. I enjoy soaring with him one last time before depositing myself back in town.

Didn’t quite manage a Cinderella style for this one, but I like the imagery.

In the magic shop, the shopkeeper only tells me that our bubble solution is “vain magic”. She doesn’t even seem interested in buying it.

After doing pretty well for a while, this is where I become stuck again. I take a third clue and I’m not surprised that I didn’t solve it myself. The trick to get past the Christmas tree monsters is right in the manual: they are afraid of caterpillars. I knew that, but never connected that a butterfly is just an adult caterpillar. From here, I missed two leaps of intuition: first, that the hurdy-gurdy could de-age something. The “clock” symbol just seemed to affect memories, but if you stick something in the box when you turn the crank left, it becomes younger. The second brain-obstacle is that I was still thinking that the butterfly had something to do with the “giant corbie” from the manual and nothing else. (It might still; we can probably age it back up using the hurdy-gurdy when we are done.) 

Bravely wielding my caterpillar-perched-on-the-edge-of-a-goblet, I stride up the mountain and the Christmas tree monsters slink away in fear. The path leads up to a clearing with a small house and a mailbox outside. I check and yes, there is a leaflet in the mailbox. Before I can make the obvious Zork I reference, the leaflet transforms into a parcel! It’s addressed to Orkan (the sorcerer responsible for the warding glyphs) and contains a burin, just like the one we used in Spellbreaker. In that game, we were able to write using the burin onto magical white cubes, but sadly we are not able to use it to write on the non-magical white sphere Christmas ornament that I am still carrying. 

Inside the house is Orkan’s lab, still messy from whatever magical experiments he was working on. We find a diary that documents up to the moment that he became a frog, including a copy of the warding glyph we saw in the snow. We also find a black hemisphere, literally half a sphere with a small peg in the middle of the flat side. It looks like it might connect to something else and I will be on the lookout for the other side of the sphere.

Aiming for John Tenniel here, the illustrator for Alice in Wonderland.

No sooner do I leave the lab than I am accosted by a snow wight. It falls quickly to my elven blade. I am rewarded by what first appears to be a snowflake, but on further examination is revealed to be a priceless diamond. I don’t need money right now, but it might be needed for a puzzle that I haven’t found yet. I pocket it and continue up the mountain.

At the summit, I discover a crater hidden beneath a dome of light. I cannot pierce the dome and my first thought is that I must descend into it for some treasure hunting or the Ur-Grue. I cast “dispel” on it only to discover that my instincts are entirely wrong and that dome was all that stood between me and an erupting volcano! I die very quickly, but not before learning that my ring (bought in the shop) protects from heat. It doesn’t however protect us from falling boulders. I restore and try again, this time running like hell down the mountain as the lava chases. It’s an exciting sequence and has the side-effect of roasting lots and lots of Christmas tree monster. The lava stops shortly before nuking the nearby town. I can climb back up again, but even after the eruption I am unable to descend into the crater. I also realize (potentially too late) that the glyph protecting the town from the monsters was written in snow, all of which is melted now. I decide that maybe I shouldn’t be doing this yet and restore back to see what else I can do.

Back in town, I learn that the burin is a “top of the line” model, the hemisphere is “full of potential”, the diamond seems just to be treasure. My next trials involve using the burin to try to write the protection glyph on anything and everything. It works perfectly well for drawing a new glyph in the snow, but not on the pew or the church door. I show the glyph in the diary to the cardinal, but he doesn’t care. I feel like I am getting close to the answer, but I haven’t found it yet.

We have to save Christmas town! Good thing I’m not a dentist!

I replay the volcano eruption and this time have a eureka moment: at the very bottom of the mountain where the rush of lava has slowed, I stop to carve the glyph directly into the cooling magma. That was the trick! In a few turns, Cardinal Toolbox and his entire congregation trudge up to the mountain to thank me and offer me a reward. He’s carrying the reliquary from the church and I take that as a sign I should ask for that. He hands it over reluctantly and the whole congregation slips away. Inside is a white hemisphere, although this one has a hole where the peg should go. I combine the two and they blend, forming a gray sphere.

Returning to the magic shop once again, I identify the sphere: it is the “Magua” and is filled with visions of things yet to be seen. It’s a crystal ball, but the kind you get from IKEA and have to assemble yourself.

I peer into the sphere a few times and am rewarded by different scenes. Only the first one seems to be related to this game; the other three appear to be Infocom Easter eggs:

• A warlock approaches a wall of smooth stone. He says the magic word, “squirp”, and a doorway appears in the wall.
• A bubbling cauldron appears in a castle.
• A giant balloon-shaped head sticks its tongue out from the “depths of outer space”
• A samurai is “slashing through armies of bloodthirsty foes in an epic struggle for power and honor”

Of those clues, the third is the most immediately obvious one and the hint that we’re looking at Easter eggs: that’s the “green guy” logo from the Hitchhiker’s Guide. I had that exact sticker on my laptop for years and it is easily recognizable. The fourth appears to be from Shogun, but that game is more than a year away. My only guess is that they had to take more time to get the rights from James Clavell, but I will dig into it when I get to that game. The third was harder but I vaguely remember (and Googled to confirm) that this sounds like the bubbling cauldron at the beginning of Zork Zero. This too leads to more questions than answers as it implies that Infocom knew that was going to be next, even well before Beyond Zork had any sales figures. Was there never any plan to make a sequel or would they have had two streams of Zork games going on at the same time? On consideration, since Shogun and Zork Zero clues were both referring to games yet to be made, I will change my guess and suggest that the first Easter egg was actually referencing The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the never-completed sequel to the Hitchhiker’s Guide game. At this point, Infocom must still have had hope that they would find a way to bring that product to market and cash in on the amazing Douglas Adams cash.

That brings us back to the only clue that mattered, the first one. I have seen two similar walls in the game, both of which I thought led to underneath the Platypus’s castle. I head there next. The first blank wall opens quickly to my “squirp” and I head inside, only for it to get dark very quickly. Thank goodness that I was careful with the charges on the lantern! Excerpt, no. No sooner do I light the lamp than a malevolent force destroys it and I am in the darkness again. I will need to find a better way to not be eaten by a grue.

The mirror seems the natural choice: I set it up outside the cave and try to shine the light inside. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work but the game makes it obvious why: the location is called “Shady Wall” and there’s no direct sunlight to redirect. I check nearby rooms to see if I can shine light in from somewhere else, but no dice. I check the other blank wall instead and that is immediately more promising: the room is called “Rock Wall” and the sun shines on the wall directly. I use my password to enter and we have bright sunlight just inside the door!

And then my lantern was destroyed. Boom.

This leads to an interesting maze/puzzle. In each room, I can blow a mirror-bubble and redirect the light that is present in the room. By turning the mirror, I am able to redirect the light down other passages. In that way, step by step, I can explore deeper into the cave. At times, there are forks in the passage and I have to go back and rearrange the mirrors to shine light down the other side. While I am doing this, I locate another patch of moss and increase my dexterity again. 

Navigating slowly, I am eventually attacked by… an umbrella! When it reduces my “luck” score, I realize that it is not simply an evil accessory, but a “luck sucker”. I am unable to harm it with a weapon, but the four-leaf clover holds it at bay for a while even though it still blocks the path forward. Not having a ton of options, I discover that throwing the four-leaf clover at the monster will destroy it! I gain experience and head deeper into the maze… until the next luck sucker shows up. I toss a horseshoe at that one. Unfortunately, I’m out of good luck charms and the next luck sucker kills me. (These two, for what it is worth, are disguised as a ladder and a black cat, respectively. Obviously opening an umbrella indoors, walking under a ladder, or crossing a black cat’s path are all considered bad luck.) 

I am stuck until I consult my notes and realize that there was a rabbit’s foot that I never bought in one of the shops. I grab it and defeat the third one, after replacing all of the expired mirrors. No more immediately attack me and I arrive at a familiar room, the one right by the “Shady Wall”. The two caves are connected after all! That is good to know, but I turn around and explore deeper instead. 

It’s not too long before I find the deepest part of the maze, the “Treasure Chamber”: 

The plunder of many kingdoms lies in a vast, sparkling mound of the type often employed by dragons as a mattress. Luckily, there are no dragons to be seen; but the southeast corner of the chamber is obscured by a curious shadow.

[…]

As you glance around the chamber, the shadow yawns and stretches. “At last we meet.”

I am unable to fight or do anything as the shadow monologues at me. 

The shadow’s chuckling subsides. “I rarely get visitors,” it admits in a wistful tone. “A pity I have to destroy you.”

I am aiming for Carl Barks for this scene. Didn’t quite hit it.

I initially think that I cannot do anything through the “feeling of utter hopelessness”, but I can create and rotate a mirror. I use that to shine light directly on the shadow in the corner. 

> turn mirror east

You carefully rotate the mirror until it faces east.

   A beam of sunlight is reflected northeast to southeast, directly into the core of the shadow!

   The thing within stands revealed to you for one brief instant. Then your sanity is spared by a blinding flash and concussion that throws you hard against the far wall.

[…]

The sound of sobbing jolts you to your senses.

   In the corner lies a feeble old man, bent with grief. His robes are tattered, his white hair scorched by flame. You slowly rise and draw closer, bending low to touch his shoulder.

   Snap! Ten bony fingers clamp around your throat!

   “I can always count on fools like you for sympathy,” chuckles the not-so-feeble old man as he holds your windpipe shut. “Still, though your mind is weak, your body is young and strong. It will make a suitable vessel until I can find another grue.” He grabs your hair, pulls your head back and directs your eyes into his own. “Relax. This won’t hurt a bit.”

   Your fear turns to resentment, then to rage as the old man violates your mind, absorbing your compassion like a sponge as he fights to take possession of your soul. 

   [Your compassion just went down.]

   “Enough!”

   The fingers on your neck drop away, leaving you gasping, but alive. You stumble backwards to find the old man leaning against the wall, breathing hard, his eyes brimming with tears.

   “Enough,” he cries again, gesturing towards the exit. “Take what you want and leave this place. I cannot bring myself to murder one so virtuous. Go!” His voice is bitter with despair. “Leave me to wallow in Compassion.”

   With these last words, the broken man fades into nothingness.

   [Your experience just went up. You have achieved the rank of Level 8 Female Peasant.]

Surprisingly, that is it. I was expecting a climactic battle with a “final boss” in the style of a cRPG, but instead the game ends with a puzzle. Should I be happy about that? Disappointed? A bit of both? I’m honestly not sure but it feels anti-climactic. I wasn’t even aware that I was doing the final puzzle and now it’s “Game Over”. As soon as the Ur-Grue is defeated, the earth begins to shake and we have to quickly run out of the cave. We don’t make it to the exit before the ceiling collapses on us.

“Is she still alive?”

   The voice at your ear is familiar. You decide to open one eye.

   “Apparently.” The old woman probes your left ankle with her fingers, and you wince with pain. “Close call, though. What did you call that spell, your Worship?”

   “Tossin. Turns granite to fettuccine.” Cardinal Toolbox wipes his mouth. “Any left?”

   “Gluttony is a sin,” retorts the old woman, helping you to your feet. “Is everything ready?”

   The old sailor daps a final touch of color onto the canvas, then signs his work with a chuckle. “All set, Y’Gael.”

   “Very well.” The old woman hands you a slim golden wand and nods at the easel. “Here. You need the experience.”

   The painting shimmers with Magick as the wand’s rays play across its surface. You watch with growing wonder as the skillful strokes and flourishes become one with the sea and sky, artfully blending with your surroundings until it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.

   “Cast off, Mister Clutchcake!” cries the old sailor, taking his place behind the wheel. “Let’s be underway while the tide’s still with us.” 

   “Aye, Captain!” The cook from the Rusty Lantern chops the mooring rope with a meat cleaver, and your magnificent galleon glides away from the wharf and high into the sky, held aloft by planes of sparking Magick. The village of Grubbo-by-the-sea dwindles off the stern; you can just see the little hilltop where your Adventure began, so long ago.

   The woman called Y’Gael weighs the Coconut of Quendor thoughtfully in her hand. “Better go below and take a nap,” she suggests as you stifle a yawn. “You’re going to need it.” 

Thus ends the story of Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor. 

Your final rank is Level 8 Female Peasant in 2435 moves, 1 level below the highest possible rank.

I like this epilogue! It’s great that so many minor characters from around the game all were secretly working with me. It’s not completely fulfilling because I wish we would have gotten more of a clue about their presence earlier, but it sets the stage for our next Adventure… that was never to come. There is no Beyond Zork II. Let’s move on to the rating.

Time played: 5 hr 00 min
Total time: 18 hr 55 min
Score: Level 8 Female Peasant

We made it out! Oh, no. We didn’t.

One level below the highest possible rank!?

Final Rating

Before I look at the final rating, I take a peek at the hint book and online walkthroughs to see if I missed anything that I should discuss. My biggest surprise is that I effectively missed the final battle: because I had such a high compassion score (based on my starting score plus all the good deeds conducted over the course of the game), I was able to bypass the final fight. That battle would have been difficult and involved killing baby grues which a person with high compassion would be unable to do. Someone that has played this themself may be able to comment more as I didn’t want to play over again to be less compassionate, but I am at least satisfied that skipping that battle is a “reward” for a job well done, even if it makes the end anti-climactic.

I also should have been able to advance one more level, to “Level 1 Novice”. (Clearly a hint of a new Adventure to come.) I am not sure why I did not as I do not see anything obvious that I missed. My best guess is that this is due to not defeating the Ur-Grue the normal way. If that’s the case, this “reward” essentially means that we didn’t complete the game with all possible points. That annoys me, but not enough that I want to play again.

I’ve commented before that I enjoyed this game less than I expected to. Let’s see how that comes out in the rating.

Needed to put on a thinking cap for this…

Puzzles and Solvability – Beyond Zork tried to navigate a tightrope between cRPG-style combat and puzzles and just didn’t manage it. We’re only two years before the Coles proved that it could be done well with 1989’s Hero’s Quest (later retitled Quest for Glory) and this game did poorly in so many ways that game did well. It was frequently difficult to know whether combats were difficult because of experience or difficult because of a puzzle, or whether we failed in an action because it could not be done or if it could not be done without more intelligence, dexterity, or some other skill. 

Even after I won, the game leaves some mysteries unsolved and plot threads unresolved. We never found a use for the goblet’s ability to call lightning, or a way to cross Zeno’s Bridge, or what the umbrella was for. There were also many puzzles that had multiple solutions, such as the different approaches we could take to heal the pterodactyl, or even escape from the inn’s basement. The randomization of objects also would lead to a level of replayability as we might not have the same options dealing with some puzzles as on a previous playthrough because we get those items later. (A walkthrough says that the game is good about making sure, even with the randomization, that the game is never impossible to win. We can easily make mistakes and enter a “dead man walking” scenario, but the game itself is careful that we never roll an impossible game from jump.) 

That said, there are two major downsides to this category. First is the final score: I am still annoyed that I did everything right and still missed getting the final level. Perhaps you’ll find something that I missed, but it’s an annoyance. Far larger in my mind is the premise of the mother hungus puzzle. Never have I been so upset both because of the walking dead scenario if you help the mother too early, but also because you have to attack her baby in order to win. This is just bad puzzle design and bad storytelling and there needed to be another approach. My score: 4. 

She looks like she is having fun.

Interface and Inventory – As the only Infocom game to use this interface, we potentially have more to discuss here than usual. The interface was brimming with options that I never used: it supports keybindings, arrow-key navigation, the ability to customize what is shown in each window by default, and even mouse support! The auto-map is shockingly good considering it is rendered in text, plus we can turn all of that off and play as a traditional text Adventure. It’s almost a shame that Infocom moved away from this engine so quickly. Even with those additions, the parser remains top-notch and includes new features such as being able to “undo” actions and to name objects for convenience.

All of that doesn’t quite move it too much on our scale, but this is as good I think a text Adventure interface is possible to be. I might get proven wrong however. My score: 4. 

Story and Setting – For a Brian Moriarty game, the store is shockingly deficient. We expect Zork games to not have plot: an unnamed adventurer is outside of a house, let’s go! This game sets up a character and a narrative, placing the story into a bigger world, but we have to wait surprisingly long to even understand why our protagonist is trudging all over the world to solve puzzles. What is her motivation? The ending pulls a lot of threads together well, but there’s no evidence of any of that connection in the game itself. We solved a bunch of unconnected puzzles, accidentally got assigned to retrieve the Coconut of Quendor, defeated the Ur-Grue and then… completely didn’t return the Coconut. We end the game fleeing on a flying ship because… why? I’m sure a sequel would have explained more, but there was no sequel.  My score: 3. 

The automap is surprisingly useful. Alas! My last ever AI picture of Dimsdale and her minx.

Sound and Graphics – Unlike Lurking Horror, we’re back to an audio-free presentation. (Sound will return in Sherlock Holmes.) This is an amazing text-Adventure presentation with a semi-graphical automap, stats screen, and more but all generated using text characters. We’re so close to being out of the text-only Infocom games, but not quite there yet. My score: 1. 

Environment and Atmosphere – Moriarty is fantastic at setting the mood and this is a category where this game nearly shines. The time travel puzzle remains a high point, both from the puzzle mechanics and the moody way in which the coming end of the world was presented. Vignettes like the platypus queen were handled well enough, and details like the prize-winning onion are down-right charming. I labored over whether to score this even higher, but I’ll save the game’s highest score for the final category. My score: 5. 

Dialogue and Acting – Moriarty writes great prose. That’s all there is to it. All of the NPCs are presented well, there are interesting monster encounters, and the epilogue is winning more points by itself than it really should. I’m only disappointed that we never discovered that the Ur-Grue was Michael Berlyn. My score: 6. 

Let’s add all of that up: (4+4+3+1+5+6/.6) = 38 points! 

In the end, our score isn’t too bad, around the same level as Suspect, Enchanter, and A Mind Forever Voyaging. I have scored this above Zork I, but that is more a reminder that I did that game dirty at the beginning of our marathon and feel bad for it now. I was young and innocent! (Looking at it now, I fear that playing it immediately after mainframe Zork was unfair and made it difficult to see that game on its own. We don’t have a practice here where we revisit and adjust old scores– it’s best to score them when the memories are freshest– but if we did, I would make some adjustments for sure.) 

Our average score guess was 52 points, quite off the mark. I might not have had the experience that you all hoped for or expected, but it was still a fun game. Our winner is the commenter that guessed the lowest score: Ventinari! Your guess of 43 was the closest to the mark. Congrats on your CAPs which will be delivered with the next mainline game.  

I may or may not have a special Beyond Zork post on cut content. I have been doing those for each Infocom game since Trinity, but this one will be tougher and I don’t have the time yet to do it well. We have two different early versions of Beyond Zork that are available to be played, but no source for either and so I will have to play them to see what the changes are. Even quickly glancing at both show major differences from the completed game and I’d like to document those differences for posterity, but maybe not next week. Unlike most Infocom games, there is very little commented-out code in the source code leak so this is my only path. 

The only notable “commented out code” that I found is the character export feature (which I did not see when I won the game) has been removed. I believe that the as-released versions of Beyond Zork kept that in, but presumably the Lost Treasures version (that I am using for this playthrough) “knew” there was no sequel so quickly excised that code. If I do a special post, I will try to dig into this more. 

So close and yet so far.

About the Zork Marathon

I have some difficult decisions coming up. We (the TAG admins) have a plan to try to close out 1993 by the end of the calendar year 2024. That is going to be very difficult no matter what, but it leads to an especially difficult choice for the Infocom Marathon. I am also on the hook for playing three main-line games before the end of the year (starting with Consulting Detective Vol. 3) and doing those as well as a bunch of Infocom games will be impossible. 

I am also, I must admit, prioritizing time on a project with my son. He and I are working on a history podcast together about UK Prime Ministers and even if we don’t make it public, I am investing a lot into this family-time project. He’s 10. I want to enjoy his creativity and desire to learn with his dad as much as I can! (If we decide to really publish the podcast, I’ll share a link here but I respect that the intersection of people that want to talk about Zork and Robert Walpole may be very small.) 

I really have three options:

• I continue the Infocom Marathon exactly as I am, playing Border Zone next and closing out 1987. There are six remaining Infocom adventures, plus the Infocomics, plus the Zork novels, plus at least brief looks at BattleTech and the stuff that Infocom was getting into as a label near the end. I will not finish all that this year or probably even next. When we get to the end of 1993, no matter where I am in the marathon, I play Return to Zork. 
• I try to cut down the marathon to just the Zork titles. That means I’d be looking at the two Zork Infocomics next, followed by the novels and Zork Zero. I’d lose a lot of Infocom history and context that way, but it’s possible that I will get them done before Return to Zork comes up in sequence so at least I still have the full Zork picture, if not the full Infocom one. 
• I pause the marathon entirely. I play just the main-line titles that I am committed to including Return to Zork. As soon as 1993 is done, I resume with Border Zone and continue through. This is the best way to ensure that we get to the end of 1993 games the fastest.

Right now, I am leaning towards #3. I welcome your input in the comments below, but I don’t want to tell the Infocom story only in part. It’s best to shelve this, review the other games (including Return to Zork) and then resume. When I someday get back to Return to Zork after covering all of Infocom up to that point, I’ll do a small re-review to see if there is anything new to say. 

With that, I’ll be seeing you shortly with Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. 3. I have already started on the introduction and first gameplay posts so expect those once a good spot opens up on the calendar. (That might be sooner rather than later.) With luck, I’ll have much of the game banked by then so the posts come out more consistently.