Zork: The Undiscovered Underground

"Freeware for Auld Lang Syne"

Zork: the Undiscovered Underground is a snappy little freeware promotional game for Zork: Grand Inquisitor. With the standard Infocom text-adventure engine, it's a throwback, only it has far fewer puzzles, points, and items. Although you have the standard allotments of grues, zorkmids, magic and, he game quickly dispels any notion it's actually serious when it hands you a plastic sword and a beaten-up lantern. There's a pervading tone of sarcasm that would certainly go overboard if applied to a game as long as any of the original Zorks. As it stands, the game is a better finale for pure Zork text adventures than the wishy-washy Zork III, even if it is annoying to find how to keep your lantern working after it quickly sputters out. I suppose if you don't have to pay for a game, you don't really have a right to whine about rude service or the utter lack thereof.

The Infocom parser still allows you to create complex sentences, although with the relative paucity of locations, items, and item interactions, you won't be using the more detailed aspects too much. There are two major improvements: when you type SCORE you see the actions that got you points, and compared to earlier arcane machines, saving games to a file is absurdly easy and quick. The catch phrases that permeated the earlier Zorks have been kept on the shelf, but there are still a lot of puns, including a new take on candy bar names, and busts of two Implementors(early bigwigs at Infocom) jabber irascibly for your entertainment even before you figure how to get them to help you. Some of the items from earlier games have been recycled and downscaled; in one room you'll see a flathead, a miniature balloon and raft, and a small house. You have several ignominious ways to die along with the usual helpings of anachronisms including a 69,105-seat indoor theater, a janitor, and something a lot like a xerox machine. There's even a chance to wear a costume and several opportunities to mix with some grues.

After an amusing introduction where it is revealed that all other heroes are indisposed, you are thrust into an obscure, unexplored little backwater by the Grand Inquisitor. You'll be asked to return a progress report, but you'll need to get out first, and that boulder placed at the exit serves to motivate your thinking powers. With a lantern that gives out surprisingly easily(hey, it's over three games old already!) there's a sense that you'd better sort out what's going on quickly. Of course, in the Zork spirit, the way you exit at the end is completely unforeseeable, but unlike the earlier Zork there is a half-happy ending if you neglect a certain action, and regardless of how successful you are, you'll have to put up with the Inquisitor's vitriol. I suppose the reasoning is that if you want actual praise, you'll have to buy an actual game.

Having played many entries to interactive fiction contests, I don't believe this game quite stacks up with the best of them. It's a bit too flippant at times, it relies on the earlier Zorks, and the dimming-lantern non-puzzle is too nasty too early even if it does make sense. With the inclusion of Grues and the self-parodying, Activision(Infocom was long gone when this was released) is getting into Sierra/Space Quest/Leisure Suit Larry territory. However, this game has enough humor and odd puzzles, and there are much more boring and wallet-busting ways to spend an evening an impromptu Zorkfest re-playing Zorks I-III and pulling down this little puzzler from the unofficial Infocom page.

I'll buy that for a Zorkmid!

--ye'll need nary a Zorkmid, lad, it's freeware!
--multiple successful endings
--most humorous Zork product
--classic Zork puzzles, but they make sense
--fun references to earlier games don't go overboard
--Where'd the delays go when I changed rooms? They're what's most obviously missing from when I played Zork I-III on the Apple.
--less impossible to solve before you give up and use hints

Whose idea was this? Dimwit Flathead's?

--a bit short
--too-flowery clues as to how to resurrect your lantern
--no references to the Flatheads, XYZZY or PLUGH! Or even HELLO SAILOR!
--maybe a little less satire and a little more imagination for complete balance
--the other Zorks had such cool, funny packages.
--they never put out an InvisiClues hint book for this game. Waah...

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/02, Updated 02/25/02