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.

Missed Classic: Beyond Zork - Finally Finding the Plot

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back to Beyond Zork! I admit that I have struggled with this game. It's not that it's a bad game, but I have difficulty motivating myself to play or write about it. Every time I try, my attention drifts elsewhere and I find something else to do. I'm almost surprised I haven't opted to paint my bathroom by now. This should be impossible – this is a Brian Moriarty game! This is a Zork game! This is Infocom! I've played my fair share of duds for this blog — and I'll admit, a bad game can be charming in its own way. Every one of them inspired me to write, sometimes too much. Beyond Zork is the first game where my primary feeling is one of mediocrity. It should be a better game and my energy is sapped. This session at least ended well and I hope that I can keep up this positive motivation to finally finish and rate one of the final games in our marathon. 

Last time, I needed hints to progress, including a major one for solving the riddle at the lighthouse entrance. After navigating the structure and battling interesting monsters — from replicating dust devils to a creature with countless eyes — I opened a chest at the very top. What happened next was unexpected: I was teleported to a celestial realm filled with unicorns. They didn’t like me much and banished me back to earth with a warning that they would not be so friendly next time. I still have many unsolved puzzles, with perhaps the largest being that my character hasn’t “found the plot” yet. We (the player) know what is going on and that we’re questing for the Coconut of Quendor, but all my protagonist knows is that she had a sudden urge one day to do a fetch quest for a cook in a nearby inn and before she knew it she was trying on armor and being insulted by unicorns. What is her motivation?

This week, as the title suggests, we’ve finally discovered the plot. Let’s get on with it!

Missed Classic: Beyond Zork - Rejected by Heaven

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back to Beyond Zork! After ten hours, I have to admit that I’m struggling a bit with the mix of RPG and text adventure elements: I’m never quite sure if I should be looking for a puzzle solution or just hitting whatever the obstacle is very hard. I’m having a lot of fun, but starting to get frustrated by the game never telling my character that she should be doing any of this, almost as if I missed some big “call to adventure”. Last time out, I explored pretty much the entire game world that I could, defeated a few monsters, was defeated by even more of them, and generally got the lay of the land. This week, I need to put two and two together to solve some puzzles and try to get someplace. 

When I left off, I had just made my first trip south of the crocodile-infested jungle to discover a strangely Christmas-themed village. It was appropriate for December, but the rampaging Christmas tree monsters there weren’t as easily dealt with as putting your discarded tree out on the street on trash day. Near the village, I also rescued an adorable “minx” from some abusive hunters. It looks like a fantasy version of a “mink” (best known for being popular in coats of the 1980s... shudder), but one that can dig up chocolate truffles. (In the real world, mushroom truffles can be found and dug up by some breeds of pigs and dogs.) With my new companion in tow, let’s explore!

Missed Classic: Beyond Zork - Everybody Wants to Tour the World

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back to Beyond Zork! It has been longer than I intended since last time, but to recap: Magic is going crazy! It’s mere days before a certain Guildmaster (from Spellbreaker) is going to destroy magic for good. It’s up to us to locate the Coconut of Quendor which will somehow preserve magic for future generations. As this is a cRPG and not just a text adventure, we are playing a custom character: a Zorkian version of Lady Dimsford from Plundered Hearts. While “we” the player know about the imminent demise of magic, our character does not. Thus far, we have discovered the first town, completed a small fetch quest in the basement beneath the Rusty Lantern Inn, and set off into the wilderness. Presumably, we’ll learn about the plot officially soon enough.

My plan this time is to explore and map, solving what puzzles that I can that are obvious, but mostly just trying to get a lay of the land and notate everything that I will have to solve or defeat later. This is my usual pattern with adventure games, but Beyond Zork is not “just” an adventure and the RPG aspects may make this more difficult than I expect. I am especially worried about combat: I had to save-scum to defeat the rat-ants in the basement and I am concerned that my character is not well-suited for direct combat, at least not yet. I don’t think you can create a character that isn’t “winnable”, but I really have no idea.

Missed Classic 124: Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor - Introduction (1987)

Written by Joe Pranevich

If Infocom is remembered for one thing, it is the Zork series. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sales data: from Infocom’s first day until they were purchased by Activision, Zork-series games accounted for 44% of every game sold. And yet, the company seemed almost desperate to be known for just about anything else. After the third game was released, Dave Lebling and Marc Blank decided to launch its followup, Enchanter, without Zork IV branding, a choice that may have had something to do with that game’s 50% revenue drop. Infocom continued to push against their Zork heritage even after it became clear that they would never again have a series that inspired so much love… and sales. By 1987 however, desperate times called for desperate measures and the long-standing superstition against calling another game “Zork” had to come to an end. With Marc Blank having (mostly) left the company, Lebling working on The Lurking Horror, and Meretzky on Stationfall, the responsibility for continuing the Zork saga was left to Brian Moriarty. 

And so it was, five years (and twenty-seven games!) since the last Zork-named title, Moriarty released Beyond Zork in November of 1987. It could not have come at a more desperate moment: the year-long experiment in faster-developed games across more genres was nearly over and none of the new games were sticking. Plundered Hearts, despite being an amazing game that everyone should try, stumbled out of the gate to become their second-worst selling game to date. Moriarty did not however want to just cash in on the Zork name for a quick buck; he was intent on making a newer and better game than any that Infocom had seen before. To that end, he would craft Infocom’s first true RPG, design a new interface for text adventures (including automap!), and bring back the whimsy of an early Zork adventure game. It wasn’t just Zork, it was… Beyond Zork! (Cheesy, I know.) 

Missed Classic: Lurking Horror - Amputated Content

Written by Joe Pranevich

It has become something of a tradition for me to dig into the “what ifs” of each Infocom game as I finish it. Unlike most of what we play, we are fortunate that so much Infocom material has been saved (in some cases “leaked”) to allow us to study their work in a way that would not otherwise be possible. With Lurking Horror, we find a game that struggled against too much content, almost from the very beginning. Dave Lebling had big ideas, and the game’s code is sprinkled with comments lamenting the size restrictions of the original ZIP engine. 

Lebling spoke about his wish for more space in an interview with Brass Lantern in 2002:

Stephen Granade: If you had the chance to redo any of your Infocom games, which one would you change? What would you do differently, or would you avoid the game entirely?

Dave Lebling: [...] I'd have loved to have done "The Lurking Horror" as a larger-size game (it was almost the last of the "small" games which had to fit in 84k bytes of disk space). Some good scary stuff got cut out of it or never implemented due to the size restrictions.

So what is this “good scary stuff” do we still know about? Let’s dig in.

Missed Classic: Lurking Horror - Won! And Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

One of the tenets of the Cthulhu mythos (as I understand it) is that prolonged exposure causes insanity. It is perhaps for the best then that we have reached the end of our playthrough of The Lurking Horror. We here at “The Adventurers Guild” cannot be responsible for bouts of madness among our readers... although we’re all spending our evenings playing adventure games from thirty years ago, so how sane can we be? Please write your answers in the space below in the form of a limerick.

Last time out, I accomplished a lot: fought a bat-monster on the roof of a campus building, scared away a street urchin, and defeated an evil professor by accidentally letting him sacrifice himself to a dark nether god. As I have now found the (broken) computer that houses my lost term paper, I am not sure what I am supposed to be doing in this game. I assume that I’m supposed to be finding and defeating the evil that has invaded campus, but with the Professor of Alchemy gone, surely that is accomplished?

As I wandered the now-empty halls of G.U.E. Tech, I had no choice but to give up and take a hint to find out what I was missing. The answer: I’m missing something that I was supposed to do with the elevator.

Missed Classic: Lurking Horror - Creepy and Kooky

Written by Joe Pranevich

It’s Halloween in August here at “The Adventurer’s Guild” as we play several horror-themed games in rapid succession: La Crypte des Maudits (1991), A Personal Nightmare (1989), and Lurking Horror (1987). I enjoy the spooky interplay between these titles, seeing how each approach the genre. It’s a coincidence, but it’s delightful. 

Last time out, I died again. Instead of a zombie janitor, this time I was sacrificed by an evil professor to a dark creature of the abyss. It had tentacles. The idea of a dottering old professor with a pentagram in his office is a fun one, but underscores that Lebling walked a fine line between horror and humor in this game and may have hit “funny” more than intended. Even compared to Stationfall, this game is not particularly scary. In that game, we always felt one step away from being killed by an appliance. This game has zombies that explode after slipping on floor wax.

Missed Classic: Lurking Horror - The Department of Alchemy

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back to Lurking Horror! I skipped last week to close out on Stationfall, but we’re back now for a second helping of Lovecraftian horror. Last time, I found myself in a computer lab during a snowstorm with only a “hacker” to keep me company. The term paper that I was desperate to finish was somehow swallowed by the “Department of Alchemy” and I must venture through the wintery G.U.E. Tech campus to locate and recover my paper before it is due in the morning. Along the way, I explored some tunnels between buildings and a famously long corridor before stumbling on a tentacled monster on the campus’s famous dome. I survived that, only to be killed by a zombie-janitor when I interrupted him waxing the floors. 

I’m confused by the game’s tone so far. Nothing seems particularly “horror” here, more like the campy horror movies that used to be on at midnight hosted by Elvira. We’ve encountered two monsters, but the mixture of the magical and the mundane makes for an interesting contrast. It’s difficult to be scared by a zombie that just wants to wax floors, even if he does kill you. And why are we hunting for this paper anyway? Is it worth my life to get a good grade in this class? And if the city is blanketed by this much snow, wouldn’t they cancel classes? I’ll try not to ponder those questions as I continue exploring.

Missed Classic: Stationfall - When Scientific Accuracy Attacks (Deleted Scenes & Alternate Puzzles)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last time, I started into Lurking Horror (don’t forget to post your score guess!), but we still have a bit of business left with Stationfall. Infocom is a company that we have a unique level of understanding about thanks to leaked source code, developer interviews, and a veritable “cabinet” of internal documentation. I do not like digging in too deeply while playing so that I can approach the games as spoiler-free as possible, but now that we’re done I can dig in and report back what I find. Sometimes we find a lot (like all of the half-completed Moonmist variants!) and sometimes we find less. As Steven Meretzky is the source of much of the “leaked” documentation, we have a rare view at his development process all the way down to notes from individual testers. It is not a full view of the design of the game, but it provides a unique insight into how mature he had become in game design at this point and how little effort was wasted. 

Steve Meretzky was famous for keeping notebooks of game and design ideas that he would turn back to for inspiration. Our story starts out with a question: what game should he make next?

Missed Classic 111: The Lurking Horror - Introduction (1987)

Written by Joe Pranevich

This is going to seem like deja vu: 1987 had not been a great year for Infocom. The deal with Activision concluded, Cornerstone failed, and sales of text adventures were slowing down. Hollywood Hijinx bombed with only 12,000 copies sold. Bureaucracy failed to capitalize on its A-list author, Douglas Adams, and shipped only 28,000 copies. To offset the sales loss, Infocom was forced to produce twice as many games as before. Making games was difficult, but making twice as many games with the same team seemed impossible. Fortunately, Infocom still had a developer or two with recent hits: Steve Meretzky (with Leather Goddesses and Hitchhiker's Guide) and Brian Morarity (with Wishbringer). While these two would reach back to produce easily marketed sequels, other implementers sought fresh ideas. One of those was none other than Dave Lebling, one of Infocom’s founders and most prolific authors. 

At that point, Lebling wasn’t bringing in the numbers Meretzky and Moriarty had been. Spellbreaker actually sold negative copies in 1986 as Infocom wrote off unsold inventory from the previous Christmas. Starcross and Suspect were long enough ago that their market performance could hardly be predictive. But Lebling had a plan to enter a market that Infocom hadn’t entered before: horror. Horror was then (and now) a popular genre. In October 1986, when Lurking Horror was just getting started, Steven King’s It was the bestselling book on the New York Times list. Through 1987, King would have three more of his books on the Top 10 list, including the #1 selling hardcover of the year, The Tommyknockers. Lebling may also have been inspired by the growing popularity of The Call of Cthulhu tabletop game. Whatever the reason, Lebling and Infocom were excited to try their luck at a new category of game.

Missed Classic: Stationfall - When Best Friends Attack (Won! And Final Rating)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last time out on Stationfall, my attempt at Fourth of July fireworks ended up a dud: the bomb that I spent so much time working on failed to go off. All roads in the game so far have led to finding or securing bomb-making parts and so while I am sure that I am on the right path, I need to figure out what I might have missed. Meanwhile, the evil Pyramid of Doom that has taken over the stations’s systems is gradually making the station less and less livable for carbon-based life forms as literally everything (even the doors!) is trying to kill me. I’m glad we don’t need to use the bathroom in this game because I can only imagine the horrors of an Evil Toilet. It’s only a matter of time before this scourge escapes the station and takes over the universe, so we’d better solve it quickly.

We’re finally reaching the end of Stationfall. I am sorry that it took me far longer than planned to get here and I am grateful that you stayed around for the ride.

Missed Classic: Stationfall - When Ostriches Attack

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last time out on Stationfall, I died. After ages exploring the space station with my pals Floyd and Plato, circumstances got away from us. The computer virus that plagues the station took over Plato, the kindly librarian robot, and he killed me as Floyd looked on in horror. Although evil and murderous, Plato’s inclinations as an educator remained intact and he helpfully monologued the full plot of the game. This means that I now know what is going on and I have the start of an inkling how to fix it. Of course, I must restore back to an earlier point and replay a ton, but that’s what Infocom games are like.

In case you forgot, let me recap what I learned. Somewhere very far from here, the Zeenaks and Hunji were locked into an epic war. The Zeenaks developed a weapon to finally turn the war in their favor, a computer virus of a sort (in the form of a pyramid) that would turn not only Hunji devices against their owners, but also convert factory equipment to create more such pyramids and spread throughout the galaxy. How the Zeenaks intended to survive their own weapon is not clear. The weapon was launched but never made it to its destination. Somehow, it was picked up and diverted by a lone Hunji ship, the same ship that the station picked up a few days ago. In a matter of days, the station has been corrupted and all humans on board have been eliminated. (I’m still not convinced this is true; I found evidence of survivors on my first day on the station, but not since then.) The pyramid device is now adapting the factory levels at the bottom of the station to create copies of itself to send out across the universe. My job will be to get down there and try to find a way to stop them. I’m only missing two things: a way to get down there and a way to stop them.

Missed Classic: Stationfall - When Nerds Attack

Written by Joe Pranevich

Hey, do you remember that time when I was going to take a short break after Christmas? That break turned out much longer than I anticipated. In a world that is so full of stress, I will not trouble you with my own, only to say that once you put one of these post series down, it is very difficult to remember what you were thinking and doing. Time dulls our recollection and an easy write up becomes much more difficult. That is especially a problem with Stationfall: there are so many barely-pulled plot threads going on that keeping them all in my head when fresh was difficult; after taking a break? Forget about it!

Last time out, I finished exploring the station. This game, much like the Zork series and Planetfall, is “open world” in the sense that you must spend a long time exploring every nook and cranny to find the pieces that will eventually be used to solve puzzles. At the end of that session, I had a lead on how to access the Space Village; that’s where I’ll start this time out. As you will soon see, that replaces one open area with another even more confusing one. Rather than spending this session putting together pieces and solving puzzles, I could only try to map out an area a bit smaller than the part that I already explored. I hope the real puzzle-solving comes next time out. 

Missed Classic: Stationfall - When Food Dispensers Attack

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! It’s December already and I hope you are getting ready for your holiday cheer. When we last left Stationfall, our intrepid hero had just arrived at Space Station Gamma Delta Gamma for a mission of great importance: pick up a shipment of bureaucratic forms and return them to our ship, the SPS Duffy. Unfortunately, something feels wrong as soon as we arrive. There is no greeting party and as we explored, we discovered the whole station seemingly abandoned. Eventually we made our way to a scientific module where we discovered a holding tank with a large hole in it. What evil is prowling the corridors? Where is the crew? And how will we escape the deserted station with no fuel? We have quite a mystery on our hands!

The beats so far between Planetfall and Stationfall are eerily familiar. Perhaps, too familiar? In that first game, an emergency forced us to escape to an unknown planet only to find it completely devoid of life. We explored empty area after area to gradually unlock the clues behind what had happened to the world’s population and to find a way home. In Planetfall, the emptiness was part of the point; the lonely tone could only have been created by having a wide (but population-less) area to explore. Stationfall has so far copied both of those beats exactly, landing us in yet another vast empty area that we have to map and gradually sort out to find out where everyone went and how to get home. Whether we decide that this game is brilliant or derivative will ultimately come down to how well the new game justifies the return to the same old beats. Planetfall was amazing, but I didn’t want to play it twice. 

Given all the mapping and exploring to do, this week’s post is pretty much just that: mapping and exploring. There’s a lot of ground to cover, but no real way to tell this game in a linear way. You get to explore it the way I am, with a lot of open questions that will (I hope!) coalesce into a puzzle-solving frenzy over upcoming weeks. This will likely be our last Stationfall post this year, but we will resume full force in January.

Missed Classic 102: Stationfall - Introduction (1987)

Written by Joe Pranevich

A few years back, I planned a short marathon of 14 Infocom games directly or indirectly associated with the Zork franchise. Instead, I went a bit crazy and ended up playing all of the games, learning Cornerstone, and I’m this close to getting a Frobozz Magic Tattoo. It’s probably not healthy. Instead of this being our tenth game, it’s our twenty-eighth and we have a lot more to go. In the original marathon, Planetfall and Stationfall were connected to Zork thanks to grues, and a passing reference that they had been picked up from a backwater planet somewhere in the galaxy. It was a small hook, but expanding my goal to play all of Infocom made the point moot. July of 1987 gave us Infocom’s first double release with both Stationfall and The Lurking Horror making their debuts. Internal production data reveals that Stationfall was completed first, so it will be the first one that I play. 

To recap: 1987 had not been a great year for Infocom. The deal with Activision had concluded, Cornerstone had failed, and sales of text adventures were slowing down. Hollywood Hijinx bombed with only 12,000 copies sold. Bureaucracy failed to capitalize on its A-list “author”, Douglas Adams, and shipped only 28,000 copies. In order to offset the sales loss, Infocom was forced to produce twice as many games as before. Making games was difficult, but making twice as many games with the same team seemed impossible. Fortunately, Infocom still had a developer or two with recent hits: Steve Meretzky (with Leather Goddesses and Hitchhiker's Guide) and Brian Morarity (with Wishbringer). While these two would reach back to produce easily marketed sequels, other implementers sought fresh ideas. We’ll get to those sequels and fresh ideas before long, but for now let’s just focus on Stationfall.

Infocom Marathon: Selling the House that Zork Built

Written by Joe Pranevich

On June 13, 1986, Infocom ended, but our story does not. That is the day that Activision officially acquired Infocom. The team had fun with the event, even hosting a mock (Jewish!) wedding for Activision CEO Jim Levy and Infocom CEO Joel Berez. This was 18 years before same-sex marriage was legal in Massachusetts, otherwise they might have been in trouble! Infocom had made tremendous games, but they were no longer the successful upstart they once were. Depending on your point of view, Activision’s purchase either kept the adventure ball rolling for a few more years or ensured its eventual downfall.

Rather than doing a regular check-in post, I hope you will humor me as we look at Infocom’s situation both immediately before and after the purchase. This analysis will be based on sales data and other information that has leaked out in the three decades since Infocom was a running concern. There will be charts! We’ll also briefly recap 1985 and the beginning of 1986 games before looking towards the future. What happens to our Infocom marathon once Infocom is no longer its own company? Does this mean I need to play Activision’s Murder on the Mississippi (1985) and Portal (1986)? No, but there are still more games in front of us than behind.

If you were expecting a Consulting Detective post today, I am sorry to disappoint. We will continue our exploration of the Pilfered Paintings shortly, but for my birthday I gave myself permission to make charts instead. What could be a better birthday present? I hope you enjoy this brief return to our Infocom Marathon which I hope to resume properly in a few weeks.

As the strange newlyweds looked each other in the eye on that fateful June morning, I like to think that Joel had just two words that he was dying to say to his new beau, two words that would tell his new partner exactly what he meant to him. In my head, that meeting could only have ended one way, “Hello… sailor.”

Missed Classic: Spellbreaker - Won! And Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

Spellbreaker started as a chase, then it became a hunt for macguffin cubes, now we are finally closing out through some of the most devious puzzles every created for adventure games. We’ve just about reached the end the last original “Zork” game. This has been a game that I have in turn loved and hated. It’s the longest Infocom game so far. Despite my previous misgivings, I am enjoying it more as it cruises to the finale.

Last week, I continued my quest for cubes. I found one deep in the sea, discovered when I transformed myself into a clone of a particularly annoying fish. I found a second after racing a roc to its nest, and a third after helping a green-eyed boulder play a game of bumper cars with her brown-eyed friend. This game likely makes no sense to anyone not actively playing it, but there have been a few great puzzles recently. With that cube retrieved, I can teleport point to a new cube room: Dark. That has two exits, but as usual only one that I can pass through. I descend into a strange dark cave-- let’s go find some grues!

Missed Classic: Spellbreaker - The Chase

Written by Joe Pranevich

You’ve heard the classic story: boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy and girl happen to be levitating rocks on a Tron-esque grid? It’s classic. If I have to say one thing about Spellbreaker, it is not afraid to have interesting and difficult puzzles. And despite the number of times that I have been stuck in this game, I’ve nearly always managed to get myself unstuck by looking at the problem in a different way. As we approach the end of the game, the overall picture is coming into focus. Connections are forming between the areas that the cubes take us, but I wish I did not have to spend the first half of the game feeling like I was playing a text-adventure version of Quantum Leap. Oh boy…

One other thing: this game is long. I’m ending this post at just over 18 hours in, making it the longest Infocom game by far and that does not include any of my time replaying from scratch last entry. The only longer game in this marathon is mainframe Zork which clocked in at roughly double where I am now. No actual Infocom release has taken me more than twelve hours to win. If they had planned to make this the “grand finale” of Zork, I think they succeeded under that metric at least.

Let’s play!

Missed Classic: Spellbreaker - The Incredible Shrinking Man

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! Last week, I was able to puzzle my way past a splash-down with a hungry fish, bring a statue to life just long enough to steal something from its mouth, shrink a snake, and insult The Phantom Menace. As I have mentioned before, the game seems very random with sequences of puzzle vignettes that are connected through teleportation rather than a contiguous world. In all of this, I was able to snag my fourth cube and I am approximately 1/4th of the way through the game. I will have to pick up the pace or you will be reading about Spellbreaker forever, but it is a hard game to rush. Besides, if this is the final “original” Zork game, I want to savor the experience… or at least to give it the best possible shake.

I know I was a bit down on this game when I started, although it may have had as much to do with my own mental place while playing as anything else. I’ve taken a pause and a reset and am approaching the game with refreshed eyes. I’ve replayed the entire game up to this point and can better see the connective tissue. We’ll see how it plays out as I approach the finish.