Beyond Zork
| Beyond Zork | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Infocom |
| Publisher | Infocom |
| Senior Developer | Brian Moriarty |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
September 15, 1987 |
| platform | Apple II , Atari ST , Commodore 128 , Commodore Amiga , MS-DOS , Mac OS |
| Game engine | Z-machine |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Feelies |
Beyond Zork (full title Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor , English for Jenseits von Zork: Die Kokosnuss von Quendor ) is a text adventure by Infocom from 1987. In contrast to earlier, puristic Infocom games, Beyond Zork contains rudimentary graphics in form a cartography system as well as role play elements.
action
Beyond Zork is set in the Zork universe and is based on the Spellbreaker published two years earlier . The player is commissioned by the wizards' guild to free the coconut of Quendor from the hands of the implementors, a group of god-like beings. The wizards are aware that the events in Spellbreaker will make magic as a whole disappear from the world, and they want to banish their accumulated knowledge in the coconut of Quendor, a powerful artifact.
Game principle and technology
Beyond Zork is a text adventure with minimal graphic elements. Environment and events are displayed as screen text and the player's actions are also entered as text via the keyboard. From a graphic point of view, a very rudimentary overview map consisting of ASCII characters is included, and a change of location can be made with a mouse click on one of the locations displayed there. In addition, the color palette of the game can be changed. For the first time in an Infocom game, there are role-playing elements in the form of character values such as endurance, strength or intelligence as well as a simple combat system. The game has 144 rooms and 77 objects. The vocabulary comprises 1569 words (for comparison: Enchanter understood approx. 700 words). As supplements ("Feelies") Beyond Zork contained a map of the southern part of Quendor and a tourist brochure on fictional creatures in Quendor. These supplements are referenced in the game and therefore represent copy protection.
In 2019, the source code of the game was published on the software development repository GitHub .
reception
The excellent parser and sophisticated technical features such as the ability to assign macros to function keys were positively highlighted in reviews. On the negative side, it was noted that the ability to increase character values depends on the achievement of certain game objectives, which gives Beyond Zork an unnecessary linearity. Furthermore, the lack of transparency of the effects of attribute increases on the game was criticized.
Web links
- Beyond Zork at MobyGames (English)
- Beyond Zork in the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB)
- Packaging and goodies on GUETech.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ GitHub.com: Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor by Brian Moriarty (Infocom). Retrieved April 18, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Review in SPAG
- ↑ a b Review in CGW (PDF; 26.8 MB)