Infocom produced some of the greatest text based adventure games. What set this company apart from the competition was the development of advanced parsers that would allow you to enter commands in complete sentences. Up until this point, most text adventures used a two-word structure such as "go north" or "open door" - Infocom changed all of this by not only greatly expanding the known vocabulary of understood words but also allowing one to use commands such as "open the door and go inside." They also added extensive physical add-ons to each game such as maps, charts, ads for in game items and other physical things that not only enhanced your experience but were often required to play each game. We will included as much of these add-ons as possible which include the work of many fine 3rd parties and the web pages that still support them. At the bottom of this page we will list any sources of our material. Please support these original content creators for without their hard work and dedication, these works of art may have fallen into the cracks of history never to be seen. Descriptions via wikipedia.org
1981
Zork is a text-based adventure game wherein the player explores the ruins of the Great Underground Empire. The player types text commands for their character to traverse locations, solve puzzles, and collect treasure. The game has hundreds of locations, each with a name and description, and the player's commands interact with the objects, obstacles, and creatures within them. Commands can be one or two words (e.g., "get lamp" or "north") or more complex phrases (e.g., "put the lamp and sword in the case"). The command must fit the location's context (e.g., "get lamp" works only if a lamp is present). The program acts as a narrator, describing to the player their location and the results of certain actions. If the game does not understand the player's commands, it asks for the player to retype their actions. The program's replies are typically in a sarcastic, conversational tone, much as a Game Master would use in leading players in a tabletop role-playing game.
The original 1977 version of the game was a single release, Zork. When it was converted into a commercial software title, it was divided into three episodes, with new and expanded sections added to the latter two episodes. Much of the game world is composed of puzzles that must eventually be solved, such as a set of buttons on a dam or a maze to be traversed.