Antic, v7(3)

~2 minute read

Jul 1988

ST New Products

Beyond Zork

Harvey Bernstein

Beyond Zork attempts to improve upon Infocom's time-honored text adventure style by merging it with fantasy role-playing elements.

This game does not take place in Zork's Great Underground Empire, but in the Southlands of Quendor on the other side of the river. Aside from occasional references to Zorkmids, grues and the like, this in no way follows the storyline set in Zorks I-III -- Infocom's first big hit.

The storyline is that magic is failing throughout the Southlands and only one brave adventurer (guess who!) can brave the pitfalls and dangers to recover the fabled Coconut of Quendor. Beyond Zork monitors your character's advancements in six key qualities -- Endurance, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Compassion and Luck as well as weapons and armour strength. And as in other role-playing games there is combat galore. It seems as if every other room contains discipline crabs, dornbeasts, etc. This "hack-and-slash" approach is not what we have come to expect from Infocom game.

Macros on the 10 function keys are now provided for the common commands such as examine, drop, take, etc. The text is in color (red, white and blue). The most obvious addition is a self-mapping feature. As you explore the world of Beyond Zork a map (without labels) is updated in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, with rectangles representing nearby rooms and lines indicating possible exits. This eliminates the need to type in direction commands. You can either use the mouse to point and click on a line indicating the direction that you wish to travel, or use the arrow keys. Wonder what will happen if you jump off the bridge? Now you no longer need to save the game first. Beyond Zork comes with a handy "Undo" command that back-steps you one place if you find you did something disastrous (or just plain stupid).

Bat all the changes I've outlined take memory and something had to be sacrificed. Unfortunately, Beyond Zork sacrificed exactly what Infocom writers do best -- lots of descriptive text with a loving eye for detail that adds a sense of realism to good adventures. Where once there were paragraphs of description when you first entered a room, now there are two or three sentences. Want a description of a creature you've encountered? The game refers you to the picture and text in the package's "Lore and Legends of Quendor" booklet.

It's not intrinsically a bad thing to take advantage of the larger memory in today's personal computers by adding all sorts of bells and whistles to the established Infocom format. But if adding those bells and whistles cuts into the heart of your product, is the trade-off worth it?

This article appeared in
Antic
Jul 1988

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